AN AMERICANOS LONDON 
By LOUISE CLOSSER HALE 



AN AMERICAN'S 
LONDON 

BY 

LOUISE CLOSSER HALE 

ILLUSTRATED 




HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
NEW YORK AND LONDON - MCMXX 



1^V 






An American's London 



Copyright, 1920, by Harper & Brothers 

Printed in the United States of America 

Published September, 1920 

p-U 



SEP !P ;S20 
©CU597431 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

On Combing Janxjary Seas Frontispiece 

"This Maisonette Has the Charm op Being in 

Chelsea" Facing p. SS 

"Spring, Your Lordship, Spring!" " 210 

Country Inns and Joy-rides — History Without Any 

Strain on the Intellect " 23S 

Country Places That Could Be Reached by Tube " 280 

The River, Which, of Course, Means the Thames . ' ' 318 

Going Straight onto Mauveish Moors " 324 

"If It Should Rain!" . *' 328 



AN AMERICAN'S 
LONDON 



AN AMERICAN'S 
LONDON 

Chapter I 



New York. 



BUT I love him!" 
This is no way to begin a travel book ; a 
traveling to England and a staying there in 
the cold of their adored spring. Yet it is this ciy 
which is driving me away from all the comforts of a 
country to one that is supposed to be suffering from 
the lack of them. 

It is not my loving him that sends me off on comb- 
ing January seas; frankly, if I were in love with 
''him," whatever him he may be, I should not go 
away at all. I might pretend that I would, and 
advise others to do so, but when the time came I 
should hang around his club door, hoping for one more 
look at him. Oh, I know us! 

Still — in the words of the English, whose shores I 
am about to visit^I am "fed up" with Cora's com- 
plaint. A girl with a name as sophisticated as hers 
ought to be able to take care of herself, and not get 
so deeply into the mire of love that she has to drop 
in every morning after my breakfast, and sometimes 
before breakfast (and axioms come hard before 
coffee), to ask me for a thought to hold on to that 
she might get through the day. 

I always give her a th«)ught. I tell her, for in- 
stance, that a man who would ogle a strange 

I 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

woman over his fiancee's shoulder in a restaurant 
would cause her worse misery after she married 
him; that discovering him in these tricks now is a 
pure gift from — I said Venus, for Cora thinks she 
is a pagan, although a member of the Baptist Church. 

**How fortunate that you are able to read him 
aright before it is too late," I console. 

''Unghuh!" sniffs Cora. 

''Now you know his base self, and when you find 
that a man is base his fascination must sooner or 
later become a poor, mean thing." 

"That's right," gulps the advised. 

"Then go through the day," I said, "with a singing 
of thanksgiving in your heart that soon you will be 
out of bondage to him." 

It is always at the end of such thoughts for the day 
which I offer Cora that she pipes up with : 

"But I love him!" 

On this especial morning in January I was about 
to turn on her and shout out that I was sick of love — 
hers and everybody else's — that a woman of forty 
standing with reluctant feet which pointed toward 
fifty had found out ways to keep her interested other 
than listening for the door-bell, telephone, letter- 
carrier, and all such modern means which pleasantly 
torture us in the absence of the loved but distrusted 
one. This speech, if fiercely delivered, would prob- 
ably break our friendship and I could then go happily 
out into the highways and byways of life, where, of 
course, I would find no evidence of hymeneal pursuits. 

It is as well, perhaps, that the telephone-bell rang 
before I had an opportunity of cutting the Gordian 
knot following upon Cora's, "But I love him." She 
is not entirely a fool, and she might have asked why 

2 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

I waited until I was my present age to hand out this 
sort of stuff — she is a slangy girl — why I had not 
preached this in my youth instead of taking up at 
fifteen with a very young man whom I so adored that 
I walked home from parties with my knees bent — 
that he could the more comfortably keep his arm in 
a horizontal position around my waist. 

This would have been embarrassing, for I would 
have had no adequate reply beyond untruthfully 
regretting that wisdom had not come to me earUer 
in life — at which Cora would have sniffed. 

However, Clotho, Atropos, Lachesis, or whichever 
of the Three Fates had my case in charge, rang the 
telephone-bell, and as we were in my room Cora did 
not plunge for the receiver. 

The message was the answer to my prayer for 
surcease from love — snappy over the wire — one, two, 
three, four, five words: ''Want to go to London?" 
vibrated at me. 

I could then and there have put down the receiver 
and said to Cora, "I am offered a job by a theatrical 
manager to go to London to play," and if she had 
asked why it mightn't have been a publisher sending 
me across to do a book I would have replied that a 
publisher, or his representative, took infinite leisure 
over such arrangements. He enjoys (appears to 
enjoy) the preliminaries, and probably charges them 
to the firm. After an exchange of courtesies he would 
have suggested that if I had any time for tea, or if 
not tea, for lunch at the Brevoort, it would be very 
pleasant, as he hadn't seen me for a long time. If the 
firm was vei:y business-like he might end up with 
some such definite offer as, "Are you fond of trans- 
atlantic travel in January?" 

3 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

My reply over the telephone was not that of the 
Complete Actress, who would immediately have 
responded, "Yes," and then regretted that she had 
not shown more indifference with a view to raising 
her salary. My life had become tinged with a writer's 
reserve, or at least with a reserve of one who tries to 
write and who, so far as the printed word measures a 
writer, has succeeded beyond her own wildest ex- 
pectations. I never see a book of mine without 
wondering how ever I could have managed it! Still, 
playing in London would mean an escape from the 
Coras of life, and I admitted that I should like to 
talk it over. And at this there was no intimation of 
food to be offered me at any time. I was just to come 
over to the office immediately and "walk right 
through." They mean business when you "walk 
right through." 

Business for me, but not for those anxious ones 
gathered in the waiting-room through whom you 
walk — over whom you walk — your entrance into the 
inner office meaning the exit of all those of your type 
who stand without the gate. 

"Many are called, but few are chosen," cried one of 
my shabby contemporaries. She nodded cheerfully, 
but I knew the bitterness of her cup. I have tasted 
of it myself. 

The sight of those men and women — waiting — wait- 
ing — never ceases to appal me. For years I was one 
of those who gather in the outer offices, and when I 
am an older woman I may be one of those again. 
"Learn a trade!" I want to cry to those waiting 
women. "Sew, tat, cook, write bad stories, but de- 
velop some other means of making money, however 

slight. Don't go through life feeling that your 

4 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

bread and butter depends solely upon the favor of 
the theatrical office-boy." 

But they will not learn a trade, and they furbish 
up their finery and each morning make the weary 
round of managerial offices. We of the theater 
know the tragedy of Broadway. I wonder the visitor 
to New York can find a charm in that wide, sparkling 
street. Must they not hear the footfalls of those 
many thousands on the treadmill — does not the 
weight of heavy hearts unconsciously make sight- 
seeing a burden? It doesn't seem so. The buses 
for the strangers trundle their freight, the barker 
calls through the megaphone, "This is the Rial to 
where the actresses walk up and down." The visitors 
laugh — and stare at us in search of work. 

When I had ** walked right through" I was in 
another office — not yet the "holy of holies," but one 
full of those who had also been invited to share my 
privilege or who, with more courage than the other 
waiting ones, had pushed their way in and were 
keeping their eye on the closed door where un- 
doubtedly sat some splendid god. Typists were 
rattling madly on their machines, the office-boy (with 
two sets of manners, one for the outer and one for the 
inner rooms) ran about accomplishing nothing; vari- 
ous attaches of different theaters tore around in the 
squirrel-cage, and the whole effect of "big business" 
served to reduce the timid artist to an insignificant 
creature which the manager could do entirely without. 

Indeed, if the sensitive player does not stop to 
analyze this senseless confusion, he begins to feel 
that not only can they do without him, but without 
all artists — that plays can be freely acted by the 
managers, the stenographers, and the bill-posters, and 

5 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

unless they cut their salaries immediately this new 
order of things will be put through. For these mo- 
ments before the Zero Hour it may be well to bear in 
mind that the playhouse would go on if the actor 
wrote his own plays, sold his own tickets, beat his 
own drum, painted his own scenery, and rang his 
curtain up and down himself. Every element that 
goes to make up a production can be dispensed with 
except the actor himself. And he would not be with- 
out an audience, for, while all the appendages of the 
present-day performance were in the earliest periods 
of history entirely lacking, the mimic art was — some- 
how or other — expressed to a public seeking this form 
of diversion. 

I wondered — to give myself courage, no doubt — 
how long certain theatrical firms, who are looked upon 
by the little unbusiness-like people with whom they 
traffic as marvels of astuteness, would last if com- 
peting in Wall Street against the able minds of 
those large, quiet, courteous offices. I maintain they 
would find themselves entangled in the clauses of 
the first contract drawn up by the Wall Street gentle- 
men, caught by little cunning traps such as they had 
never thought to set for the simple-minded player. 
Since they do business largely with men and women 
who couldn't learn Double Entry in a lifetime, they 
are acknowledged by us to be masters of high finance. 
No one has found them out — but me^ — and if they 
read this I am lost! Yet they will not read it — there 
is no possibility of a play in this rambling discussion 
upon English life from which I seem at present far 
removed. 

Once beyond the door where the god sits the 
amenities of life are resumed. Hands are shaken, a 

6 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

chair is offered, a baby photograph is displayed, 
soUcitude on my part is shown for the welfare of 
wives. He is not a god at all, but a very decent sort 
of a fellow, and I wonder why I was making in- 
cendiary speeches against the whole regime a few 
moments ago. Managerial charm is creeping over 
me. Moreover, as one becomes a part of that manage- 
ment, and about to play under it, one becomes par- 
tizan to their cause. 

I hope I am going to be strong when "Now, as 
to salary," begins. But I feel I am not going to be 
— that it would not be pally to ask for too much. 
We are now pals. Besides, I want to go to London. 
That is the worst of the actor. What he wants to do 
is always overcoming what he ought to do, and he 
gi'ows so bored with business technicalities that he 
will sign anything. It was after I had shaken hands 
again and gone out that the arguments I should have 
advanced came limping up like a delayed relief party : 
the cost of high living, the income tax, the cold of 
English theaters, and, perhaps, the loneliness. 

I returned to the little room in my club and looked 
about me. Well, he had said one thing truly, and 
gently, ''You have nothing now to keep you over 
here." No, nothing to keep me over here or over 
there, nor the necessity of anything in life but a 
branch to ^erch upon. ^^ Sur la Branche'' indeed. 
In a passion of abnegation which has brought me 
more pleasure than discomfort, my home is let to 
strangers while I have worked for the war. They 
are kind strangers who speak of the happy spirits 
which seem to penetrate the rooms. Two spirits. 
Let the gentle wraiths stay on in those sunny rooms, 
but the body of one must go about the earth for a little 

2 7 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

while longer and find a reason for enduring. Not 
only a reason, but a joy in enduring. Once when I 
was young I wrote, ''There is nothing sadder than a 
full moon shining upon a spinster." That was wrong: 
one must learn to love the moon for its own beauty, 
not for the young man it is shining upon. I expect 
some spinsters have found that out, but I am sure 
they had to work for it. 

Still, when once grasped, the moon will not go back 
on us — which the young man is apt to do at any 
moment. Cora's orbit this month will be very pale 
and largely eclipsed by her woe. She will find some, 
later, beautifully soft and mellow, and again they 
will fail her because "he" is not there. But there 
is one thing I am certain of: my man must be in 
the moon — no nearer — for real complacency. That 
attribute is not for the young, but I find it an easy 
word, like old slippers when we come home from the 
dance. I claim it for the woman of forty — we have 
got to have something all our own! 

My name was cabled to England to see if the war- 
time powers approved of it, and Britain roared no 
protest. Yet, ere I went down to that grim finality, 
the Passport Building, I found my feet straying auto- 
matically to the office of my War Relief. Strange, 
how in eighteen months a sense of obligation greater 
than any mere necessity of earning your living comes 
to one! In my small partitioned office I gazed re- 
flectively at the desk-chair in which I had so often 
writhed with uncertainty. Fear for my imperfect 
judgment! Fear for improper administration of the 
offerings of others! Fear that I could not appear 
with dignity in meeting my appointments for the day! 

Trying to inject into my work a love for it suflScient 

s 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

to make up for my shortcomings; trying, above all 
things, to keep in mind the men for whom we were 
working that we might not swamp their dear interests 
in proud executive accomplishment. 

Invention during this period had left me. Only 
lame stories came from my pen in those few leisure 
hours I had for writing. The wolf, having no door of 
mine to howl outside of, followed me in the streets 
snapping at my heels. Yet I could not lay down my 
unremunerative occupation had not this departure 
been encouraged, insisted upon by those with whom 
I worked. The fingers of war had clutched me by the 
tliroat and I had grown accustomed to them. I found 
in them a sustaining force, and some other than my- 
self must loosen their fierce grip. 



Chapter II 

New York. 

I HAD begun to get my digestion out of order with 
positively my last farewell dinner before my pass- 
port came. 

It is hard to tell why you feel distinctly embarrassed 
when the usual ten days have elapsed and this certif- 
icate of a decent life has not arrived. You put on 
a jesting air when your friends question you and tell 
them, ''You don't want it generally known, but you're 
a German." Away down in your heart you are won- 
dering if the government has found out anything 
about you, or your family, that you didn't know 
yourself — or any mild escapade that you had known, 
but had never told a soul. You cut across the street 
to avoid members of the company who have already 
received their little green books. They have a smug, 
settled look which is irritating. You stare at boots 
in a window, wavering in your intention to buy an 
extra pair for England. Some one has sent you a 
steamer-rug, when you get home, and its stern, 
rectangular plaids are looking you squarely in the 
face. "Do I return to Scotland or do I not?" it asks. 
Toward the end the management becomes anxious, 
calling up daily to ask for news. There is no evasion 
about a passport. You either have it or haven't it. 
It would be the only lie you would be sure to be 
caught in. 

*' Funny!" grumbled the manager over the 'phone. 

10 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

''AH of those with foreign blood got theirs im- 
mediately." 

''Glad to get them out of the country," I replied, 
trying to be jaunty. "They want to keep me/" 

"Yah!" He hung up. He didn't seem to care 
whether he kept me or not. I was wanting most 
awfully to go to London. 

I had my passport by late evening. Goaded by the 
managerial "Yah," I called up Washington on the 
long-distance and flung myself upon the mercies of 
a delightful creature whom I would deem to be de- 
hghtful even had he refused to assist me. There was 
no reason why he should put on his military cap and 
go over to the Passport Office "for such a worm as I." 
There was no reason why he should feel kindly toward 
me. A crowd had laughed at him and I had occa- 
sioned it. A fortnight before he had come up from 
Washington to a private showing of a moving picture 
in one of those down-town buildings where little pro- 
jecting-rooms, all along in a row, are rented for such 
occasions. I nabbed him as he came along the public 
hall, for in my pride over my own War Relief feature- 
fiJm, it never occurred to me that he could come a 
distance to see any other. The picture was being run 
and he stoopingly made his way through the darkness 
to a front seat. Our story unreeled itself. Our 
greatest American stage director appeared upon the 
screen. His priest-like mien and recognized white 
collar received a fine burst of applause. Upon the 
white sheet he was directing a drama within a drama. 

The major peered at me through the blackness. 
His voice traveled. "Ai'e these the Armenian atroci- 
ties?" he timidly asked. 

Yet, even after that, over a clear wire came the 

11 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

answer from him that my passport had been snowed 
under and was now shoveled out and on its registered, 
controlled way. At the instigation of my management, 
now thoroughly humbled, I was then besought to 
ask of him a search for the remaining reluctant per- 
mit of the company. And this was accomplished. 
One would think that a man entering upon official 
life would put a cheerful sign over his door, ''I am 
without friends," and pursue his duties with compara- 
tive ease. Yet I notice that it is the busiest men who 
are most importuned and who find time — make time 
— for kindnesses. A member of the Morgan firm 
will write a letter of recommendation for an eighteen- 
dollar-a-week stenographer, but such a request will lie 
unnoticed on the desk of a woman who has no pursuit 
but that of getting through the day. 

Sometimes she neither writes nor reads. Recently 
in a fashionable hotel I saw two well-clad women renew 
an old friendship. ''I wrote you three weeks ago," 
reproached one. 

*'0h my goodness! Did you? I open my letters 
only about once a month," the other actually ex- 
plained. 

The friendship was not getting along very well 
when I left them. 

Now the passport is here, the British consul has 
approved it and I have sat in a row with soiled Greeks 
at the Custom House, waiting for my dock-pass. 
And all of a sudden I don't want to go to London! 

Why must one seek strange adventures in ill- 
heated lands when one can sit by the steam-radiator 
and reflect comfortably upon more enlivening ex- 
periences that have passed! What is memory for if 

not to spare us the physical effort of new exploits? 

12 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

Why the mind's eye if not to fill it with past visions? 
Countless pleasant happenings can be recalled; there 
was the season you made the hit in that light comedy 
— it was a splendid year — your clothes fitted you, and 
you always just caught a car and never just missed 
them. It was spring, too. There was that young 
man ('way, 'way back, of course) who wanted to die 
for you — but was persuaded not to. There was the 
one you reformed, and who never drinks heavily even 
to this day without speaking freely to everybody on 
the street of your goodness. There was the year you 
sold eveiything you wrote. And could not lunch 
without magazine editors, because you had enough 
work, anyway ! For me there were many lands already 
visited to reflect upon: glittering Tunis, Taormina 
faint with beauty, soft Tuscany, the Tyrol and its 
good cofTee, grim Spain, the white roads of France, 
the singing birds of the Old Dominion, the drooping 
elms of New England, the vast quiet of the Grand 
Canon. 

I settled down in my chair — deep down for deeper 
thought. Why had I not appreciated before this 
great heritage! When it seemed for a time that my 
life was dismembered I had figured myself poor in 
any kind of goods from which one could derive profit. 
It had come to me as curious that more had not been 
translated from those wide travels into a definite 
moneyed crystallization. With us two we saw a coun- 
try and paid for the seeing. I had thought from time 
to time we paid a great deal for all we saw. I had 
been left without the protection which money can 
buy, and once or twice in my enforced elimination 
of the few luxuries which myself and one other had 
shared, I felt unshielded from the world. 

13 



AN AMERICAN S LONDON 

Now, in my small rented room, philosophizing from 
the depths of my chair, I could have clapped my hands 
with joy at my discovery. I was the richest of women. 
Provision had been made by these happy wanderings 
for a life of luxiuy for my inner self. I would never 
be poor or lonesome — nor would the mental retina 
be empty of pictures. It was the greatest of all 
dowering. The daily meals for the physical creature 
were the slight instances of life which I knew could 
always be managed. I breathed happily. I would 
not go to London. I would stay at home and rest. 
And begin reflecting to-night — upon that jaunt in 
the Pyrenees, perhaps. Then to-morrow night — 

The sudden bounding into mechanical life of 
many engines in the street below brought me to a 
realization of other motor-cars than a small ghost 
roadster which wound around far mountains. I arose 
and looked down upon the oblong, shining limousine- 
tops — new roof-trees for the traveling rich. Far up 
the street two of the theaters had flashed the electric 
signal to make ready; the engines labored and coughed, 
for the night was cold; some sank into rest again. The 
whir of the self-starters, with that irritating sugges- 
tion of chance response, brought hoots of derision 
from the chauffeurs. The cars in action wheeled out 
and ahead of those so retarded. 

Husky-voiced, shabby men were now running along 

the pavement and in and out among the cars, calling 

their numbers in the hope of a chance quarter. It 

was a method of livelihood pursued only from custom. 

The figures ^hone out brightly from the electric 

carriage-call over the theater. One wretch clung to 

the running-board of a great machine. ''Get down, 

you coke fiend !" yelled the driver. The wretch stepped 

14 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

down. He was too thoroughly a victim of cocaine even 
to curse. 

I myself was contemptuous of him. He was of 
those who shrugged off realities to live the more 
easily among dreams. My brain made a little zig- 
zag — quite tangible — I could have drawn its course 
with a pencil. He lived among dreams — a cowardly 
way of getting out, wasn't it, then, this dear dreaming? 
His physical life, starved for beauty, made an effort 
to create images of loveliness — we were not unlike. 

There was a knock at the door and one of those 
women I love came in. Why do we love one friend 
more than another? This one was not beautiful and 
few thought her clever. She read but little. She was 
not industrious and slept late always. I think I 
love her because she is good, and her values of life 
are incomparable — and she acts beautifully. I love 
her because we were together when war was declared 
and when the armistice was signed, and were together 
over the death-bed of a friend. There was something 
about her those three times as though her soul had 
come out where her face generally was and her rugged 
features were all effaced. For she was very shiny 
and beautiful. Then, again, she leads a sedate life, 
as though she prefers it, but she once cried: ''Is 
there no man in this world who can care for me? 
I don't ask anything honorable of him — just that he 
will care for me!" But she never spoke like that again, 
and went on living dully, her clear understanding not 
impaired by rancor. Not hard on others who were 
loved. Perhaps these are some of the reasons why I 
care so much for her. Small reason I had to care for 
her that night if I was to pursue a cocainized future! 
You had a way of telling her things — possibly because 

15 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

she didn't come back at you with things of her own 
to tell. I unfolded my beautiful plan for future 
diversion on an earth that must be lonely. 

She sat down firmly in a chair with her hands on 
her knees — not graceful at all — and spoke squarely 
at me : 

''Something like a cow ruminating as it chews its 
cud." 

"A cow?" 

"Except that you can't count on the cud, or the 
fields in which to chew." 

"There are pastures," with dignity, from me. 

"Whose?" 

"My friends have many acres." 

"I wasn't brought up in metaphor. I suppose you 
mean flats, houses, or country places?" 

"Well— yes." 

"You'll be an acquisition to a dinner-party." She 
was undoubtedly sneering at me. 

"Why not? I can share my experiences." 

She yawned. "I know them — the 'has-beens.' 
'When I was in Calcutta — the moonlight at River- 
side with the golden fruit — once I saw Vesuvius in 
eruption — ' Great Scott!" 

I spoke. "But don't you see my life is finished?" 

Her laugh in a way was gratifying. "Do you re- 
member that American woman in France who felt 
her life was over, and that she must give way for the 
younger generation for there was no more room for 
her in God's plan? So she moved to a little house in 
the Marne Valley. That was in July, 1914. Then 
the troops began coming through and she found in 
her enormous activities that God had just begun with 
her — the book publishers had just begun with her, 

16 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

too, incidentally. Small chance she has these days 
to ruminate, although cud is in plenty for her now 
and she doesn't have to borrow a pasture to chew in, 
either!" 

The last motor went honking up the street, the 
thumping of my steam pipe prefaced its retirement. 
The night outside grew darker, for the illuminated 
signs were being flipped off by unseen hands, but the 
looms of the city, weaving the destiny of those four 
millions, went on. We never stop growing, never stop 
growing, never stop growing — old! I reflected. 

She moved to the window — a step in m;^' congested 
quarters. ''Look at this black world. By some ter- 
rible privilege you and I were dumped down on earth 
in these awful times. They are not over yet; some- 
times I get discouraged and think they have just 
begun. I believed when peace was virtually declared 
that immediately everything would shake down and 
we'd be comfortable once more — " 

''I know," I interrupted. ''I even learned a verse to 
recite at parties; it is all about rest after peace. It 
runs: ' Oh, days of ease; oh, honeyed nights of sleep ! ' " 

"'Honeyed nights of sleep!' Good God! I am 
worrying over that League of Nations so I can't close 
my eyes. Aren't they going to take in Russia?" 

"Yes; aren't they?" I echoed, glad of the diversion 
from being scolded. 

But she returned to her mouton and considered my 

exclamation as a point for herself. "Now, you see! 

Can you imagine two women at the witching hour of 

midnight talking of such a subject — having such a 

subject to talk about — two decades back? Thank the 

Lord you weren't forty years of age sixty years ago 

with nothing to do for amusement but jump through 

17 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

your hoop-skirts ! Yet in the midst of all this you want 
to borrow a cow-lot to lie down in and think about 
that grape-vine over the inn door at Poitiers." 

"I'm awfully tired/' I muttered, feeling sorry for 
myself. 

She was all for me immediately. ''Of course you 
are, but you are not old enough to stop. Nobody can 
stop now. There are too many things to be worked 
out. Here we are playing with a cut-up puzzle and 
but half the picture made." 

''I'm not a world power. I can't meddle with their 
blamed jig-saw mess," I defended. 

"I don't know what you are, and I don't know what 
I am, but I know every one of us must try our darned- 
est to finish the design. I don't suppose there is even 
a little three-cornered piece that it is up to you as an 
individual to fit in. It will be the whole world strain- 
ing — a concerted effort — which will complete the 
picture." Her deep voice trembled, again something 
came out through her eyes, and she had not a face — 
just a starry look. 

"I will go to London, of course," I assured her, 
feeling important and belonging to the Peace Confer- 
ence. "Besides, I have got my living to make." 

"That's the most sensible thing you've said. Buy 
your own sunny pasture, and when you're an old 
lady—" 

"Old cow," I amended. 

"No, darling, just when you're old, really old, re- 
view your sweet early dreams through the quiet day. 
But this is not the time for going over the past, 
L , much as we might like to." 

So I leaned over and put a label on my hat-box — 

full of shoes — and my friend snapped down some^ 

18 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

thing on the desk behind me which I feared I recog- 
nized. 

"You're not going to set the world afire with your 
discoveries in London. I don't imagine that for a 
moment, but you might solve one question that 
would help one woman to keep one hired girl one 
week. My friends write me it can't be done." 

She pushed my typewriter toward me insinuatingly. 

I rather caught at the idea. ''And at the same time," 
I chattered out, ''by this study of social conditions I 
can avoid the Cora complaint." 

It was after the elevator had clanked its door that 
it occurred to me I had heard her laughing in the 
hall! 



I 



Chapter III 

On the Boat. 

""^^F you go on board you cannot return," a voice 
had croaked at the gangway. Extraordinaiy, 
this arbitrary disposition of a woman's existence 
during the period between armistice and peace! A 
whole row of gentlemen on the safe side of a neat 
white picket-fence had already learned my age and 
my occupation. They had looked over my pocket- 
book, and generously given me clean bills for dirty 
ones. 

'^'S' all you got?" one had even probed. 

'"S' all," I answered, taking a fierce joy in the 
consciousness of a safety-pocket around my waist 
full of very dirty money. 

'"J' want t' see yer friends onc't more?" pur- 
sued Cerberus, evidently having dealt with women 
before. 

"Nope," I answered, sturdily. My friends had 

been strictly forbidden to come near the boat. He 

snapped the dock-pass among others belonging to 

voyagers who had been equally cold to prolonged 

farewells, and I made my way for the twenty-third 

time in my life toward my twenty-third cabin. To 

be honest, I should say my forty-fifth cabin — two for 

each voyage — the forty-sixth one to be mine as soon 

as the chief steward could be approached. The hour 

before sailing was no time to traffic with that digni- 

20 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

tary. Yet others were already in his office; a woman 
was popping her eyes at him Hke the flicking of fingers 
into his face^ — in the words of the elocutionist, she 
was using force, not stress. ''Come down and see it 
yourself. Come down," she commanded. 

They went below and I appeared upon the upper 
deck just in time to view all my cabin luggage, which 
was swaying in a great net, disappearing into the hold 
— disappearing for the rest of the voyage. Tooth- 
brush, candy, diary, hair-tonic, evening dress for the 
last night, all, all going down. I am not a person of 
authority, but I have roared through melodramas 
with some success. 

"Stop!" rang out upon the noisy air. 

The bell of the dunmiy-engine tinkled and the net 
swayed uncertainly above the pit. ''Lower that to 
the deck," I commanded, in pure desperation. 

The hjrpnotized stevedore seized and swung it from 
the maw of the open hatch and landed it onto the 
sweet, safe floor. 

"What the"— (a lot of words)— "yer doin'?" called 
the boatswain. 

"Lady tella me," explained the dock-hand, in- 
dicating my old gray head. 

By this time I had a bill out and was flapping it 
at him from above. No Barbara Frietchie ever waved 
a country's flag more appealingly. "My cabin lug- 
gage!" I shouted. "Some fool mixed it up — Why, 
it's all labeled!" I was contracting a crowd, but audi- 
ences are encouraged in my life. The Italian, stimu- 
lated by the evidences of my wealth, opened the net. 
Others eager to share with him in doing good — and 
the bill — hastened to divide the spoils, and up they 
came from the lower deck to the cabin, and I lay down 

21 



AN AMERICANOS LONDON 

in exhaustion on my bunk — my typewriter in my 
arms. 

Our first rehearsal was held in the state-room of 
the director fifteen minutes after we were under way. 
We had been assured by the management, left com- 
fortably behind in New York, that we could do all 
our rehearsing on the boat and be ready to bm"st 
into a London production upon landing. They argued 
that it will be pleasanter than rehearsing on dry land 
before leaving, as we don't have to take subways 
and buses and — if late — taxicabs in order to meet 
every day. In other words, the manuscript wasn't 
ready. 

The idea of plunging into work before we had 
dropped the pilot probably originated from the brain 
of the director himself. We could get some idea of 
what we were going to do, and, afterward, when we 
were confined to our room with horrible seasickness, 
we could cheerily commit our lines. So we sat huddled 
together, all with an ache in our hearts, no doubt, 
and mad to get up and see our majestic leave-taking 
down the harbor of our city; yet all soberly intent on 
our job. 

After a while there was a slackening of the engines, 
and a nervous one who had never been to sea before 
exclaimed that we were stopping. He looked relieved 
— I believe he thought we were going back. The 
drama of the play wavered. We were such a lonesome 
little company of Americans, each had a small drama 
in his life that was probably quite as good as any 
plot ever given to the public. Being Americans, they 
were purely domestic in character, having to do with 
the wife, or a house in the country not yet paid for, 

22 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

or babies left behind. And dropping the pilot was 
very definite. Still there was the play! 

*'Go on," prodded the director. ''You pick him up 

sharply there, Mr. B , but always the gentleman, 

of course." 

The rehearsal continued. 

That night in my cabin I disposed my effects with 
a view to lost motions should seasickness come again 
to visit me. We have long been strangers, but the 
seasoned voyager never boasts of his imperviousness. 
Personally, I have withstood the stormiest trips to 
be violently ill in a row-boat bobbing around Capri. 
Like love, it comes when least expected, and, 
as far as I am concerned, like love it is about as 
welcome. 

Musing on this brought Cora to my mind, upon 
whom I had rained a number of farewell gifts as though 
to atone for my desertion of her. She was continually 
roused from her heavy-hearted, at least, heavy slum- 
bers during the last night of packing by articles 
hurled against her door, more in anger than in sorrow. 
An electric iron thudded, a traveling-lamp crashed, 
cretonne curtains flopped, and just before I clambered 
into the automobile en route to the dock in the gray 
of the morning she received my second steamer-rug. 

"Why are you so good to me?" she had cried, in a 
passion of teary gratitude. I might have told her — 
but I didn't — I couldn't get the dog-gone things in the 
trunks. 

The friend I love had been with me through the 
earlier part of the night, and if she reached her hotel 
without being blackjacked it was not for lack of par- 
cels, tempting, at least, in their size. She has one of 

those charming qualities of the darky: a horror of 
3 23 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

seeing anything thrown away. She spent the time 
stooped over my waste-basket, picking out the des- 
perately discarded. She went home with one balsam 
pillow, three-quarters of a pound of coffee, one corset 
with the whalebone removed, half a tin of powdered 
milk, one eye-cup, ten cents' worth of granulated 
sugar (loose), and a package of New Year's cards 
unfortunately defaced by the senders scrawling their 
various names across them. All of these tokens of a 
misspent life were tied together with Christmas rib- 
bons of various lengths and color. I am not ungen- 
erous by nature, but as I realized the capaciousness of 
my forty-sixth cabin I began to regret my prodigality. 
This may have been occasioned by a chance conver- 
sation at dinner the first night out. The English- 
women were carrying over sugars, woolens, rubbers, 
glass tumblers, linen tea-towels, and all sorts of food- 
stuffs up to seventy-nine pounds, which is the limit 
for each individual. After seventy-nine pounds you 
become a wholesale lady, liable to duty. 

I must learn more of this. As a student of social 
economics I suppose I must be wide-awake. I hate 
to be wide-awake and to improve my mind. I do 
not know whether I have changed or whether the 
fault is with old ternpora and mores, but with my first 
crossings I was terrified that I should not get ac- 
quainted with every one on the boat — and now I am 
terrified that I may get acquainted with too many. 
I have found that boat friendships are, as a rule, 
ephemeral. We are not drawn together — we are 
dashed together. Cocktails in the smoking-room, 
boredom in the lounge, makes us talk to one another. 
A neighborliness with the deck-chairs around you is 
natural, and the results are often happy. You may 

24 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

even remember whose cards are whose after you have 
been ashore a week. 

But at the tables you must be friends. An American 
has indeed bridged the gulf that separates us from 
the Continent and continental manners when he can 
come to his dinner on the first night out and bow to 
the table. It is easier for us to sit down and nibble 
away at bread, staring miserably into nothingness, 
than it is for us to enter into an immediate casual 
conversation with the neighbor at our elbow. After 
the second or third day we become very brash — not 
to say intimate — and want to ''open wine" for every 
one. It is harder for us to stick to a happy medium 
than the English, who are, one might say, in abun- 
dance on this boat. They'll talk on the first day and 
they'll talk on the last, but there will be no lavish 
manifestation of friendship. Yet, if the spark should 
develop with the Englishman, it will not be a quick- 
dying flame — you'll get a Christmas card for the rest 
of your life, anyway. I received them all through the 
war from a friend in London — cards specially designed 
for the times. I remember one humorless offering 
singing, "Heigh-ho, the green holly," with a picture 
of a Zeppelin sailing over St. Paul's. Brave, in- 
scrutable people. 

Still, there is good talk on this boat, if one cares to 

listen, and not spoil the excellence of the thought by 

becoming part of it. Big men are going over on big 

missions. Their cabins are on the same deck as mine; 

secretaries go in and out of their rooms, two or more 

men with each dignitary. Yet at night, when the 

boots are put out, the millionaires are represented 

only by a single shabby pair. No nonsense about 

clothes for them. 

25 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

In glittering contrast is a table of British officers 
near ours in the dining-saloon. They wear their blue 
dress uniforms at night, and sometimes they put on 
mufti, which our men would not be permitted. Al- 
though of different regiments the highest of rank 
seems to be in a position to criticize any lack of 
decormn among them. He is a young Irish colonel 
with a purely English accent. He is a bit over twenty, 
beginning as a subaltern and moving forward in a single 
battle as one by one his superior officers were shot 
down. I wanted to talk to him of these things, but, 
their mission accomplished in America, they are so 
eagerly out for fun I could not speak of that field of 
dead friends. Only once, after he had nervously 
sought out a captain to advise him, for the honor of 
his country, to do his spooning in private, did he 
speak of the burden of grave responsibility. How, 
on that day when he had taken command he had 
feared he had not done the right thing, for he had 
ordered his men to retreat, and of his boyish relief 
when, later, he had been upheld in his action by the 
high command. ''I can tell anybody to do anything 
after that," he completed. 

One thing I have already learned — which is rather 
a relief to me — I will not find out by asking. I must 
get what knowledge will be granted me in England 
by absorption and, possibly, by experience. Just 
what I am to experience I don't know, and little 
trickles of interest are beginning to creep through 
my frame like sap in the trees when it's spring 
again. I am glad we are coming over with the 
New Year, when even the oldest trees feel the stir 
of life. 

* Hs * *:(:;;; :{; 

20 



AN AMEPJCAN'S LONDON 

Most of the day has been spent with the director 
at the long table of the lower companionway where 
the Y. M. C. A. secretaries bring out their little type- 
writers and go through their official business. My 
typewriter was also in use, as I laboriously made out 
the lists for the property-man, the scene plots, and 
the electrician's orders for lighting our play. We even 
tjT^ed in my blackest capitals the order for taking our 
''bows" — the order of our curtain-calls at the end of 
each act. These are to be fastened to the door-frames 
outside of each entrance to the scene so that the 
players may consult it when the dread first night ar- 
rives, and may group themselves on the stage without 
confusion. 

My toes curled up in terror as I prepared for the 
calls that might never come, and I insanely wrote out 
my name on the wrong shift-key for the call I am to 
take if I get out alone. ''Fourth Curtain: Mrs. 
038834." What if they gave me "the bird" when I 
once got out there, ifl once got out there! I have 
heard these English audiences "boo." It drifts down 
from the gallery like a cry of some bird of ill-omen. 
Yet we of the theater must prepare for this mimic 
advance. We can but retreat if the enemy is too 
strong for us. 

I stopped typing after I had taken my inglorious 
mental curtain-call to look at the director appealingly. 
"Do I know my lines?" I said. 

"Certainly you know them," he assured me. 

I had asked him this a nmnber of times before, and 
it would probably be the last thing I would ask him 
before I stepped upon the stage. 

One of the secretaries, overhearing me, laughed 
with a good deal of understa,nding. "We have to get 

27 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

an assurance from some higher power than om'selves 
now and then, don't we?" he said. 

''That's one of the advantages of present-day mental 
science," some one else spoke up. The stewards had 
brought in the tea, and work had momentarily ceased. 

''Yes, this invoking a strength which doesn't seem 
to be ours is just a newer fashion for importuning God 
to help us," the first man answered. 

"Pershing isn't ashamed to ask for help in the old- 
fashioned way," a military man broke in from across 
the table. "One of his aides said to him the first day 
of the attack on the Argonne, 'General, I feel like 
praying.' But Pershing answered, 'I have been.'" 

"Well, I don't know what you call it," I admitted, 
"but if I were on dry land now, I'd be paying a 
mental scientist two dollars a treatment just to have 
him tell me I know my lines." 

"And do you?" 

"Yes, if he tells me so." 

"What if you haven't studied them?" 

"Oh, they're very sensible," I explained. "One 
'healer' gave me a good thought before the premiere 
of the play. He asked me if I had committed my 
words carefully, and I replied that I had, but that 
I was awfully fearful. 'If you've committed them, 
they're inside of you for the rest of your existence. 
Whenever you grow nervous over approaching lines 
that you feel you don't know, open your mouth "\vide — ■ 
they'll come out!'" 

One of the number said if he came the first night 
and found me standing silently with my mouth open 
he would remain perfectly at ease, but the littlest one 
of our company came over to our table for more tea 
and sturdily upheld me. I don't know what cult she 

28 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

belongs to, but she always makes me feel that every- 
thing is going to be all right, and if I paid her two 
dollars she would probably do me as much good 
as a professional "cheerer-up" — it's the fee which 
gives an importance to the suggestion promulgated. 
Why do we place small value on what we get for 
nothing? 

''It's true, it takes an outsider to help us when 
we're down and out spiritually and mentally," she 
said. "We have grown negative and we need a posi- 
tive, disinterested personality as a sustaining force." 

"That's hypnotism," the Y secretary contended. 

I was about to attack him, but the littlest one went 
on, thoughtfully: "I don't care what it is, but it gets 
you through a performance. A lot more professionals 
go to be encouraged than we have any idea of, and 
my English friends write me that many of the British 
officers went to — you know — her eyes sought out a 
Briton — "your big mental scientist over there — 
Lawson. They asked to be safely directed, and some 
asked to have their men protected." 

"I'd rather trust to military tactics," answered a 
Briton, stodgily. He was a civilian. 

"Well, anyway, they went. The thing's in the air. 
God in a new guise, perhaps." 

I broke in again, refusing to be out of anything 

which I commenced. I told them of a New York 

premiere and of my anxiety over a new act which the 

author had dashed off his typewriter and pitched at 

us at the last moment, as though we could type it on 

our brains. I had studied the part "out of my head, " 

as the players say. I felt I could never go through 

with it, so I hunted up a scientist. He was getting 

a divorce from his wife, but that had nothing to do 

29 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

with the case. He was a sandy-haired man, and I 
wouldn't trust a sandy-haired man in the heart — 
but in the head — ah, yes! During the treatment the 
healer kept leaning forward to put his hand on my 
brow and repeat, impressively, ''When the curtain 
goes up on that last act you will know your lines." 

"And did you?" one of the table asked, because he 
thought it was the time to ask it — or he may have 
wanted to talk himself. 

''Just listen," I continued. "The star sent for me 
to run through the lines between the second and this 
last act — there were three acts — and while I went 
down to the stage I begged him not to do the scene. If 
we didn't know the words it would only terrify us the 
more, for we had to play it, anyway, within four 
minutes, so there was no time to study. But, being a 
star, he was obdurate — that's what makes 'em stars 
— and I tried to rehearse with the orchestra playing 
a gay little fox-trot, and every one out in front no 
doubt saying how well 'it' was going. Well, I 
didn't know one word, not a word, and the director 
looked at me in horror. I could only hold on to the 
thought for which I had paid two dollars: 'When the 
curtain goes up on that last act you will know your 
lines.' So I told them not to worry, but to ring up. 
They did. I had to run down a long staircase, shout- 
ing out my scene, with the star standing below — " 
Here I hesitated, with true dramatic instinct. 

"I'm the goat — what's the answer?" queried the 
director. 

"I spoke all my lines, I spoke all the star's lines, 

and told him when to go off the stage, for he was 

utterly paralyzed with fear. Now what do you think 

of that?" 

30 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

The man reiterated that it was hypnotism, and some 
said it was worth two dollars. The January seas, 
trying to get into the party, slapped the boat angrily 
and slopped over our tea. It broke up the seance. 
The director had, or thought he had, the last word. 
''Pure concentration! That's the reason the actor 
is tired at the end of his performance. His concen- 
tration is tremendous. I don't believe in this mental 
suggestion stuff. Now I just go to the members of 
the company on a first night and tell them, separately, 
how good they are going to be. They always play 
better." 

And the director wondered why the ship's company 
laughed. 

A general conversation in the companionway or 
the lounge has not been the usual thing with us actors, 
however. We stick together, although we may have 
few tastes in common beyond that of the theater. 
A traveling company is brought into contact with 
men and women of all pursuits, yet we never know 
them. And what these varied men and women do 
not understand is that, in America, we do not want 
to know them. The gulf of the footlights is im- 
passable. We talk across to them — they look at us; 
if they encourage us over the footlights they increase 
our salaries. We call them outsiders, yet we know 
that they are really the architects of our fate. 

Now and then on this boat passengers drop down 
in the deck-chairs either side of me to ask if we don't 
get tired of saying the same thing night after night. 
They all ask the same question. And they are mysti- 
fied when I reply that playing a part is only one-third 
gf the performance. The other two-thirds is the 

31 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

audience — the response — and as the audience changes 
nightly we have always fresh material to work vith. 

''Still/' answered an army chaplain, doubtfully, 
"I'd hate to preach the same sermon at every service." 

''If your audience — excuse me, congregation — 
didn't have to sit in decorous, frozen silence, but 
could express their approval as your discourse went 
on, you might enjoy repeating the same thing — enjoy 
'working for points.' Some nights you would go well, 
some nights poorly. If you kept on going poorly, 
the church would dismiss you. 'Working for points' 
keeps you up to your standard." 

"We're out for something else besides applause," 
he delicately suggested. 

"We aren't. 2\pplause is all we have to measure 
our success by." 

He probably thinks us a vain people, and no doubt 
this continuous seeking for approval develops a crav- 
ing for praise — but if we are not praised we lose our 
bread and butter. Did any one ever stop to think 
that of all the arts acting is the only one that cannot 
be enjoyed alone? A woman may sing for herself, 
paint with enjoyment, write, or read what she has 
written, with a consciousness that art is its own con- 
solation. But when the actor is not before an audi- 
ence his talent is lying fallow. 

He may tell you that he stays at home and plays 

long scenes by himself— but don't you believe it. 

Imagine a farceur prancing around a room uttering, 

"I'm Charley's Aunt from Brazil, where the nuts 

come from," to silent, unresponsive walls. So, dear 

public, be generous with your applause, or at least 

let us feel that you are attentive. Don't buy an 

orchestra seat just to spread yourself out in. When 

33 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

you give your boredom full play the actor grows 
nervous. He is not holding the audience, and the 
star in the wings is apt to remark to his stage manager 
that the poor Thespian has not"a compelling person- 
ality. His re-engagement for the following season is 
beginning to fade — ''Iris out," as the moving-picture 
directors say. 

To-night, however, I was driven to my forty-sixth 
cabin shortly after certain others scattered to theirs. 
It has been a stormy day. At one time the big ship 
stopped her engines, as much as to say to the waves : 
''Now have it your own way for a while. The world 
is tired of battling and so am I." But after a while 
it picked up courage and plowed its way through 
rebellious mountains of opposition — as we must do. 

Our comedian caused the scattering from the par- 
ticular corner of the lounge where he was holding 
forth. He chose to-night to tell me in a clear, ringing 
voice of the Bowery days of his youth, and of the 
magnificent competitions among gentlemen of his 
acquaintance in the eating line. No one was caring 
much about eating, except the comedian; still, the 
subject had the fascination of novelty, and his cheery 
enthusiasm over food M'as attractive in its whimsi- 
cality. 

My confrere tells me that it was the custom for 
matches to be made and great sums of money placed 
on the man who was judged to be able to eat the 
most at one sitting. They had eating trainers, who 
would arrange the contests, and I think the man who 
had gastronomic limitations paid the food bill. 

"It would go like this," the little comedian ex- 
plained. "One fellah would eat another, and he'd say 
to him, 'I'll eat you for a thousand dollars a side.'" 

33 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

At this point, a lady, her Hfe already tinged by a 
bilious sweater, hastened out with lips compressed, 
I assume, by disapproval. But I was feeling reckless. 
There was a precious sort of man near by wearing a 
velvet jacket who had annoyed me from the first day. 
Not that he had spoken to me — oh, nothing like 
that — but he had referred to us as a troupe. ''How 
much did they eat?" I pursued, my eyes on the 
esthetic one. 

''Well, you know those Coney Island steamers 
serving a dinner, 'All you can eat for a dollar'? (I 
didn't, but I said I did.) "One fellah, Moskowitz 
was his name, ate up thirty table d'hotes — and that 
wasn't a bet. He was just taking a little ride to get 
in condition." 

The velvet jacket twitched, yet remained reading 
its vellum-bound book, but two Y secretaries went 
below to get their music. 

"Why, it was nothing for those fellahs to ask for 
all the vegetables in the kitchen v/hen they come into 
a restaurant. They ate a lot of squash — squash goes 
down easy." 

The velvet jacket heaved. 

"The first match that was ever fixed up, however, 
between a big man named Barney and this Mosko- 
witz, never got any farther than the opening speech. 
It was in one of those Dutch restaurants, and thou- 
sands of dollars had been placed on both the men. 
Barney had offered to eat this Pole, and when they do 
that it's polite for the one who made the offer to ask 
his opponent what he wants to start off with. So 
Barney says to Moskowitz, 'What will we begin 
on?' And do you know what that Pole answered?" 

"Something oily, I suppose. Sardines?" 

34 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

' ' Sardines — nothing ! ' Well, ' said Moskowitz, ' let's 
begin with ha7ns.'" 

The velvet coat disappeared, and I waited long 
enough to ask what was the horrible death of a man 
like that. He had passed away but a short time ago 
of old age. So there is nothing to be derived from this 
pleasant little sea tale beyond an added force to my 
earlier statement that actors stick by one another. 

As a little band differentiated from the statesmen, 
the financiers, the army and the navy, consideration 
is shown us. On the day we were discovered careening 
around a corner of the dining-room in our efforts to 
follow the movements of the play, the two private 
drawing-rooms of the ship were offered us by the 
well-endowed possessors. Our hostesses sometimes 
sit in a corner of these salons, no doubt thinking the 
play dreary, for nothing is so ghastly as a comedy in 
rehearsal. American women are fine in all walks 
of life — to my American mind — but there is nothing 
more splendid than one of gentle breeding. We have 
a real grande dame on the boat, in whose room we re- 
hearsed. The door was by chance left open at one of 
the ''repetitions," and a — a mineral king with more 
money than manners stopped in the passage to stare 
at the animals. The animals, always too quick to 
resent the outsider, grew restive, and the good lady 
arose, without apology, closing the door in the face 
of the leering one. We may have been strange com- 
pany for her, but we were her guests. 

I dined away from my own people one night to sit 
at the table of a great, wise man who has, quite in- 
cidentally, a great fortune wisely made. ''Dining 
with royalty, " one of the English officers put it. I 
fear that was about the only time the English officers 

35 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

noticed me. Lacking an aristocracy in America, the 
British are not unahve to our class that the moneyed 
element form. The aristocracy of brains does not 
seem to figure at all with them in any country, but 
''Is he very rich?" they will ask when we speak of 
one of our .people, just as they will say, ''He is a 
great swell," of some Briton of good birth — in both 
cases lightly, as though it didn't make any difference 
one way or the other. 

Still, I am looking forward to a very beautiful Eng- 
land, ranks leveled by a common cause, hearts welded 
into one by their sweeping losses, money made mean 
by the utter futility of it as a coin to buy forgetfulness. 
In spite of the chaos of the world, proud England 
must be gloriously happy that it is again victorious 
England. Shall I say — will I be able to say — must be 
very grateful as well? I don't know. 

The last ship's concert has been held. Unlike pre- 
war days, talent from the second cabin was not levied 
on, and girls wearing a Christian emblem made up 
the new entertainers. The Y young women were 
charming and beautifully behaved — friendly with the 
men and not too friendly. And all of the contingent 
are cheerful. 

We talk a good deal of "professional cheerfulness" 

and are inclined to sneer at it. This annoys me. 

They could just as easily be professionally gloomy — 

and they probably feel like it often. Even a Pierrot 

with his smile painted on has a better chance in a 

crowd than a glowering countenance, no matter how 

honestly it is his own. And the world is just a crowd 

which we must make our way through. 

An Englishwoman who has spent a good deal of 

30 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

her time entertaining the British in France talked 
to us in the dining-saloon one night. We all liked 
her, and all cried, and gave her money to go on with 
her work. I was talking with her afterward as some 
vague American gentleman slipped a folded-up bill 
in her hand — only, when she unfolded it, it was a 
hundred dollars. We ran up the stairs to thank him, 
but we hadn't a clue, so we came back and both of 
us cried. I don't want to burden him with my literary 
efforts, but I hope he will read this one page of this 
one book to learn how grateful she was. 

The entertainer told me that she had always wanted 
to go into plays instead of confining herseh to work 
on lecture and concert stands. She probably would be 
awful, as it is her gentle, homely, undecorated self 
which makes her. With a layer of paint and a lot 
of players around with whom she must blend herself 
to give a good performance, she might be swamped. 
But I couldn't tell her this, and I hope she will go on 
feeling comfortably, as so many do, that she is a great 
actress lost to the world. 

What arouses me, at the end of this voyage (it is 
something I did not come over to solve, yet it obtrudes 
itself through each shipboard day), is the way a 
most interesting woman like this is left to sit in her 
deck-chair, quite unattended by the gallants of a 
ship — or men of any kind for that matter — when every 
girl with bobbed hair riotously covering a scanty brain 
has a man on the foot-rest of her chair, and one or 
two others waiting their turn. This woman — thirty, 
perhaps — is amusing. She has had wide experiences, 
she has been hurt — it is in her eyes — therefore she 
can be tender. She is distinctly feminine, yet she 
sits down with her trusty fountain-pen and a blank 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

diary for companions. Why — to go into it more gen- 
erally — does the man of the world prefer to gallivant 
around with a young girl just peeping out on this 
world, instead of devoting himself to some woman, 
not so young, but so much of the earth that she 
could apply — if he asked it — her excellent knowledge 
of hfe to being exceedingly agreeable? 

(Why should she have to wait to be asked, if she is 
ready to be agreeable? But there! No use going 
into that! Keep it for another book — a tome.) 

Why isn't the pretty woman just over thirty-five 
as much in demand as the pretty girl just over 
eighteen? Of course, if the average man is asked 
this he will declare he does prefer the woman of 
thirty-five, and you must then weed out his asser- 
tions as extraneous matter. I canvassed one novelist 
on the subject. A man who never has a fancy — cer- 
tainly not a light one^ — except that which he puts 
in books, so I felt that I could get something like 
the truth from him. 

He admitted baldly that he liked 'em young be- 
cause they didn't know anything, and he could im- 
press 'em, whereas an older woman, although she 
might apply all her experience of life to her emotion, 
would be so able to measure his own emotion by 
those very experiences that he would be ''doocid 
uncomfortable." 

The littlest girl of the company, who is the mother 
of a grown-up young man, said it was all custom. 
If Adonis had gone after the middle-aged of the god- 
desses, if Jove had taken even a decent interest in 
them, or if Paris had dug some woman of forty out 
of her ancient bed to give her the apple, all the men 
now would be buying soda-water for old ladies whose 

38 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

digestions were already impaired by deep draughts 
from the Pierian spring. ''They're just like sheep," 
she completed, contemptuously, watching a good- 
looking officer hanging over a blond miss whose 
permanent wave was ruling Britannia in strict defi- 
ance of the stirring chorus of the British navy. 

I shook my head and leaned farther over the boat's 
rail to watch for the phosphorus in the water which 
I knew was not there. Only the young — in couples — 
ever see those glowing little animals. 

''No, it's deeper than custom. It's physiological. 
It's biological. These men don't even know why they 
choose stupid, undeveloped youth when they could 
have a so much better time with Mr. Benjamin 
Franklin's lady. Youth is productive, fertile, and 
they are drawn to it. They have no scheme, vicious 
or honest, in their minds for continuing the species. 
The two will only chaff together for half an hour, or 
he may lead her out to dance on the windy deck. 
She won't know the two-step as well as that carefully 
coiffed woman reading in the lounge, but there is just 
one thing that the carefully coiffed woman can count 
on — her reading will be undisturbed." 

The littlest girl exclaimed in anger, "But if it's as 
deep as that — if it can't be overcome — there isn't any 
chance for us at all!" 

"Chance for ws/" I echoed, coldly. 

But she had gone off to get her book. 

None of this makes any difference to me, and I'm 
sorry I got on the subject. I am sitting quite alone — 
and happily alone — on my packed steamer-trunk, 
its lid having been danced over by two palm-ex- 
tended stewards. Miss Brainfeather, my stewardess, 

since it is the last night out, has remembered to 
4 39 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

bring some hot water, and I shall wash my face and 
go to bed. A nmnber of passengers along this deck 
have been celebrating their going ashore as they cele- 
brated their going aboard. One bewildered lady has 
stuck her head out to call with great dignity for 
assistance. Her voice rings down the passage: 
''Shepherdess/' calls the lady, ''Shepherdess!" 
To-morrow I go into the land of delightful repose 
to solve the servant-girl question, which has to do 
with women — not men. 




Chapter IV 

A London Hotel. 

H! Oh! Oh! How cold I am! And bewil- 
dered. I don't mind — ^I never did mind being 
hungiy. I look back over the first three 
entries in my diary. Long paragraphs. Long sen- 
tences. 

I think of the English writer now in vogue. She has 
no subject and no predicate in her sentences. Some- 
times an adjective or an adverb form her whole 
paragraph. Once I believed she was crazy. But she 
is not. She is in England now and has been for four 
years. And England is suffering from shell-shock. 

But I must not write like her. I am an American 
and could not get away with it. I have not suffered 
as these people have. I must try from now on to 
have a subject and a predicate. Or the publishers 
will flip my manuscript between thin fingers. 

Adversely. 

Yet when it is so cold how can one write at length? 
Or wash — at length? But I must go back to the boat 
— to the boat, which I thought was not heated. It 
warms me to think of that boat and the hot water 
for the bottle at night — sometimes so hot that I 
poured a little of it out. Wasting hot water. 

Officials came aboard the boat at Liverpool and 
were hoiurs studying our passports. I know now they 
enjoyed lingering in the warmth. I was one of those 
they didn't like the looks of, and was made to stand 

41 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

in a long queue. It extended itself down the passage- 
way, and there we awaited our turn to come before 
the Board of Military Enquiry. The Military had 
lunch brought in as we waited. When the door of 
the room opened we could see them eating. It was 
past our luncheon hour. 

After a while I was let in. I had reached the point 
when I was about to cry out, ''Yes, I am a spy; take 
me out and shoot me," and have it over with. But it 
was only that we had no labor permits, and as I 
was the first of the company to have my passport 
examined I was sent in to represent the rest. 

I knew that I would have to think very quickly 
about those missing labor permits, or we would be 
going on down to Brest ana returning to America 
with a load of soldiers. Of course, had I known how 
cold it was to be, I would n(i>t have said that a man 
had come all the way from London to speak to them 
of this matter. Had I known there would not be a 
drop of hot water or heat of any kind in this hotel, 
I would have declared it was impossible ever to get 
labor permits, and returned to my warm forty-sixth 
cabin. As it was (having only read tranquilly of the 
discomforts of eight million Londoners, not having 
experienced them myself), I went outside and cor- 
ralled an English gentleman who had come up from 
London — gone down from London, the English would 
say — to meet his wife, and told him he must see us 
through. 

It is hard for a Britisher to be untruthful, especially 

if he runs any risk of being discovered. Yet the matter 

was fixed up. This is no Guide to the Young Traveler, 

but I think it would be wise, no matter how idle one 

is, to get a labor permit before entering Great Britain, 

42 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

and bear in mind, while you may get one for yourself, 
you can't for a maid or a valet, if he or she is to remain 
in the country. Great Britain is going to be fairly 
well engaged in the next few years finding employ- 
ment for her own people. However, when it was 
demonstrated to those gentlemen, who didn't know 
anything about it, that no one but an American 
company could play an American comedy, we were 
allowed to go ashore. 

By that time my emotions were worn down to a 
fine concern over my trunk and the securing of a seat 
in the train ''going up to London." Yet the sight of 
the first ''bobby" gave me a thrill once more, and I 
ran to a member of the company who had never been 
over before : " Look — on the dock — with a helmet and 
funny cape. That's a policeman. Isn't he sweet?" 

The American looked at him. "Not as big as ours," 
he boasted. A great impatience with a certain type 
of my countrymen swept over me. They put clamps 
down on their receptiveness the minute they go into 
another country. Everything has a comparative 
value, and, since they are sturdy in their nationalism, it 
cannot possibly be as good as the same thing in their 
own land. This is supposed to be a British fault, but 
I find it more prevalent with us. And the more — 
t^o be very elegant — reprehensible. We should be 
plastic, for we are a younger nation, without a thou- 
sand years of bacon and eggs every morning to start 
us running in our set way. 

In the train, with twice the usual number packed 
into our carriage (and Japanese generals with first- 
class tickets riding third), I sought delicately to sug- 
gest that the great charm of a strange country is 
that it is different from, not identical with, our usual 

43 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

surroundings. Some of them looked at me dumbly. 
It was all very well for me to talk about self-improve- 
ment under unpleasant conditions. / had not packed 
my traveling-rug, but they were very cold about the 
legs. They wished they were as comfortable as they 
had been at home, and devil take the joy of contrasts. 

We were hungry. There was no provision made at 
the station for food, unless you were a soldier. To 
be sure, the littlest girl was carrying ten pounds of 
sugar which had trickled a fine white hop-o'-my-thumb 
path from the customs to the train platform. The 
waste had created the wildest excitement among the 
dock-hands. One man, out of concern for her, had 
endeavored to stop the leak. 

I remember how we nudged each other, for in his 
breast pocket he was carrying some odd bits of wood, 
splinters from a packing-case. Knowing my England — 
the England of a decade ago — I explained that the 
working-man was generally very poor. The company 
seemed satisfied with this, and no one called my atten- 
tion to a very fine lady at one of the stations carrying 
a few odd bits of plaster laths in a silken bag. 

A guard came to beg for a match, and when we 
tossed him a box to keep he withdrew, gasping thanks 
like a dying fish. At the risk of being a bore, I con- 
tinued to explain that they were a courteous people, 
appreciative of the smallest kindness. Yet I was a 
little perplexed over that same porter who had been 
so grateful for a box of American matches. It was 
he I had importuned to carry my bags up and down 
the length of the waiting train until I had found my 
company. It meant a sum of money to him — and a 
very good sum — for we are prodigal at first in Eng- 
land, and apt to become miserly later. I could recall 

44 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

how the porters would have struggled for the honor of 
carrying my bag when I last lived here. Now, all of 
a sudden he grew exasperated with looking, flopped 
down my effects, and walked off. He gave no explana- 
tion, and he did not wait for the smallest piece of coin. 
Neither poverty nor manners, which formed so obvi- 
ously a part of the lives of the British working- classes 
in pre-war days, evinced themselves. Yet h6 was 
grateful for a box of matches! 

Late lunch came — wired for ahead — lunch in paste- 
board boxes. Awful. But I am glad to say none of us 
whimpered. Besides, we were hungry. 

But I must not keep writing of food (why did I 
waste my chocolates on those strangers in the boat?). 
It is late. The chambermaids have almost stopped 
screaming up and dov/n the hall. If I get to bed now 
I may sleep a little, before their morning screams be- 
gin. There appears to be no housekeeper at all. If I 
now heat some v/ater on my little stove with my last 
tin of solid alcohol, I might be able to wash, slightly — 
then hastily pour the contents of the bowl into the hot- 
water bag. 

Yes, I had better stop. I am not writing well. If 
I am not thinking of the chocolates, I am thinking of 
the hot-water bag, and whether I will put it at my 
feet or on my nose first. I am conscious of my nose — 
it is sticking far, far out in the frosty air of my bed- 
room. The cold water runs from the tap whether 
tmned off or on. 

Enter Beechey. 

Her name is Beatrice, and, since she will pronounce 
it in the Italian fashion, the abbreviation must be 
Beechey. Besides, she could have no other name — to 

45 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

me. Does it mean to you that she is small, and has 
brown hair, soft and straight? That her eyes are 
bright, looking out without suspicion upon a world 
that will always be suspicious of her and her mousey 
ways? Does the name mean that she is always shabby, 
and often hungry, I imagine? Yet she loves life and 
couldn't think of getting out of it. To die would be 
terrible. 

That is because she is a painter. If she were a 
house-painter she would do much better. Then she 
could go back to America and paint up the few ram- 
shackle cottages which bring her in a little money 
now and then, when they are rented. All the world is 
seeking for homes, except Beechey's houses in her 
home town in the Far West. There is no use urging 
her to buy fewer oil paints and more house paint. 
There is no use trying to make her see if she bought 
more house paint she could, in time, buy more oil 
paints, for she could put up the rentals. " They would 
then want kitchen floors," Beechey would argue. And 
probably they would. 

She met the boat-train in the black of a February 
night, as she met me years ago when she was only a 
slip of a girl come to England because Sargent was 
here. She wore a little American flag on her breast, 
fearing that she might have changed so much I would 
not know her. She is still an American, although she 
has not had money enough in ten years to buy her 
passage home. Once or twice a sum had been given 
her to eke out the passage money, but she had un- 
fortunately walked up the King's Road in Chelsea and 
had bought some more paints. 

It was very black at Euston, and there were no 
porters or cabs. The Tube employees were on strike. 

40 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

Beechey had been asked to get me a room with a fire, 
but she had not done so. She said she couldn't find 
one. However, our English manager was down to 
meet us. He had chartered a lorry for our luggage, and 
engaged rooms at a hotel until we could look out for 
ourselves. We were very casual over this accom- 
plishment, but Beechey said he was wonderful — • 
wonderful ! 

For two hours we then struck American matches in 
the baggage-cars (luggage-vans) and pulled out any 
trunks we wanted to. I could have had all of the 
mineral king's, as he had gone down by an early 
special train, but my own were discovered only at the 
bursting-into-tears moment. Some day I hope he will 
give me a half-crown for having pulled his im.pedi- 
menta neatly out and up the platform before finding 
them to be his. I suppose I grew a little hysterical, 
for, as I kept on pulling out trunks, I became rather 
proud of the achievement. ''It's only a knack," I 
would gasp out to Beechey, who was guarding my 
hand-luggage. 

''But you look so foolish, dear, rotating strange 
boxes up and down the platform," she protested. 

"I don't care," I shouted back. "I'm warm." 

I might never have stopped had she not called out, 
as I was trundling one huge box past her, "It will make 
you hungry." And that chillier thought stopped me. 

At last my troublesome effects were huddled to- 
gether, and I gave the driver of the lorry a whole lot 
of money to carry up my bags as well as my boxes, and 
we made our way out of the engulfing gloom of the 
terminus to the sharp clearness of the night. "It's 
lovely, isn't it?" I exclaimed. "Fair, too. That seems 
propitious." 

47 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

But Beechey looked apprehensively at the starry 
heavens. ''Too bright," she shuddered. 

''Too bright?" 

She laughed a little apologetically. "We can't quite 
get over it — the feeling that the Huns may come again. ' ' 

Then I remembered that the raiders had chosen 
their own way of making moonlight ever horrible to 
lovers, and to spinsters, and the Coras of life who meas- 
ure a night's beauty, not by the constancy of the 
fickle orb, but by his. I looked at Beechey with a new 
respect. She had been through it all, as had these 
millions of others here. She still perambulated nor- 
mally, on foot before the other, and spoke my lan- 
guage, laughed and looked the same — although 
strangely pinched about the face. And I determined, 
on that long trip to the hotel over frozen streets, if 
I suddenly found a Londoner walking on his ear, or 
behaving in what he would have considered a most 
unusual fashion a few years ago, to accept it calmly, 
as the natural result of thunderous Zeppelins, deci- 
mated homes, and dear dead sons. 

That was before we reached the hotel. In my gen- 
erous reflections this Englishman, walking on his 
ear, would not in any way affect me, beyond, one 
might say, treating the vision to an adventiu'e. I was 
not to be messed up in this four years' — er — incon- 
venience, beyond what one must suffer from the loss 
of certain material comforts. Then we made our way 
to the desk, and, according to custom, I put a wreath 
of smiles on my lip to answer the welcome I would 
receive from those black-robed ladies whose duty it 
was to assign the rooms. 

And I wore the wreath, and wore it, and wore it, 

until it grew faded and was thrown away among other 

48 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

dried-up floral offerings which, to continue in meta- 
phor, were lying in a corner of the crowded lobby. 
They looked for all the world, to the mind's eye, like 
a stack of discarded funeral emblems. 

Weir Mitchell, in Frangois, wrote of a hideous citi- 
zeness who was known as "The Crab" in the days of 
the French Revolution. She is now behind the desk in 
this hotel. A British colonel, hitherto unafraid of any- 
thing, was bending over her obsequiously, his poor 
lips trembling as he tried to balance his wreath of 
smiles on features contorted with rage. He had writ- 
ten for rooms and a reply had come that they would 
be reserved. 

"Not the truth," from the Crab. "We do not reply." 

He retreated in confusion. Possibly his first defeat. 

An anxious young woman by my side broke in: 
"Mrs. is willing to share her room with me to- 
night. I've come up from the country — and — " 

"Impossible. Hers is a single room," from the Crab. 

"But she is willing, and I will pay — " 

"Impossible." 

"But, madam, I must have a place to rest my head!" 

The Crab turned her back. A cold terror descended 
upon us waiting ones. A dreadful sense of guilt hung 
over us as we humbly took our keys. We were all 
of us afraid of the Crab, bent, venomous, despising 
us from the height of her secure position. Sure, for 
the first time in her life, of a job of some duration. 

Clutching my weighted chain-and-ball trophy, I 

asked a porter for my floor. "Not my business," he 

replied. Once in the lift, I asked the lift-man of my 

luggage. "Not my business," he replied. Once in 

my small, cold room, I asked a passing maid for towels. 

"Not my business/' came the answer. 

49 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

Abashed, I walked down eight flights of steps. 
Beechey was with me. There was a funny Uttle smile 
around her pinched mouth as she watched my grow- 
ing consternation. A sad little memorial wreath for 
a dead and gone courtesy. We ate what there was to 
eat — cold ham — and as much as we could get of it. 
I asked the waitress for spirits of some kind (I thought 
if they could be bought !) . She glared at me. ''Nine- 
thirty and past, modom." 

''Modom!" — I had been listening for that since 
my arrival. I had rather longed for the deferential 
tone which accompanies this highly affected accent. 
I had not expected to find it ejected at me as a stone 
from a catapult. I watched this young woman 
setting her table for the morning. She threw the silver- 
ware about angrily. She was, indeed, a catapult. 
''Modom" was all that was left of her manners. 

Beechey leaned over and did something in very 
bad taste. She transferred the fat of the ham which, 
naturally, I hadn't eaten from my plate to hers. 
And she devoured it without apology. When it was 
all eaten we went into the lounge, an airless place, 
packed with men in uniforms of all the Allied countries. 
Women were with some of them. Our young girls, 
in their pretty Y uniforms, who had come from the 
boat, were standing about confusedly, trying to be 
gay on the eve of their great adventure. Every one 
was smoking, and the calls for a match from the few 
waiters was incessant. A lighted match would go 
from man to man. A negro, in a British uniform, sat 
at a small table with a blond girl— obviously not a 
lady — as his companion. His black hand covered 
hers as it lay on the arm of her chair. One of the 
Y girls looked at me — she was sick about the mouth. 

50 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

Beechey could not get a taxi to drive back to Chel- 
sea. We would try, as each cab drove up with its 
freight, but always some one had a prior claim. Some 
one who had been running along the street after it. 
Once I offered a sum which I thought tempting and 
was laughed at. Once, since the cab remained empty, 
I repeated anxiously my plea that he would drive 
Beechey home. My American accent growing sharper 
in my nervousness smote him unpleasantly on the 
ear. Annoyed at my insistence, he let me have it: 
"No! No! No! That's English, eyen't it?" 

''You bet it's English — pure English. And it takes 
an Englishman to say it!" I was frightened of my- 
self. I could have cried with disappointment. 

But, hold on to this. After a while, as I watched 
those rich patrons running along, hoping for the cab, 
I thought of the old days when an underfed man, 
espying boxes on top of a four-wheeler that must 
sooner or later be taken off, would run through these 
same London streets that he might earn a few pence 
carrying these boxes into the house. Flop-flop would 
go his broken soles as he would patter along behind 
us as we sat proudly in the four-wheeler. His ragged 
garments invited the raw air; his breath would come, 
labored and agonizing, toward the end of the trip. 
And for a few pence ! 

So, penetrating the bewilderment and misery and 
heartache of that first night in England came a shaft 
of light. It was not of the moon's rays, a warmer hght, 
that sent a glow through my frame. It was a convic- 
tion, the more to be accepted in that it was founded 
not on comfort, but discomfort, an illuminating belief 
that this hideous chaos, this reversal of the glass, was 
ALL right! 

51 



Chapter V 

A London Hotel. 

HOW much of it rests with me to make it all 
right I am yet to find out. One step at a time. 
At least I have already found out that some 
of it 7nust be me. Once, in England, civility was handed 
me on a platter, asking nothing in exchange. Now I 
must earn it. 

I arose the next morning with the firm intention 
of making myself Uked. To be sure, I had no success 
with the Crab, who said if I didn't care for my room 
there were plenty who did. A room-famished naval 
officer, who was standing back of me, was decent 
enough to whisper, ''Don't give up the room," the 
phrase coming natural to him, no doubt, with the pre- 
cept of our own Commodore Perry in his mind. He 
knew, and I am beginning to know, that there aren't 
any rooms in London. He had put an advertisement 
in the papers, offering five pounds to any one who 
could find him comfortable quarters, for he had no 
time or legs, or other means of perambulation, to look 
for lodgings. He was philosophic, however. He as- 
sured me that there are over twenty thousand hotel 
bedrooms now occupied as war offices, and when these 
hotels are released and the Swiss proprietors (every 
one is Swiss nowadays) could take them over the 
problem would be, in a measure, solved. ''Live, horse, 
till spring, and grass will grow," 

We talked to each other without ceremony. All 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

the guests in the hotel are herded in a common bond 
of misery. The breakfast sausages are cold, or bad, 
or "run out." I never knew such sausages for gadding. 
But in my pursuit of being accepted as an agreeable 
person I beamed upon and tipped the waiter, who 
stole two lumps of sugar for me from some guest who 
had left the cover off his canister. People wander 
through the hotel halls with a jar of marmalade in 
one hand and a little sugar packet in the other. One 
gets very sticky in brushing past them. 

When I at last ventured forth into the rain and 
snow to report at my English manager's office I un- 
doubtedly made the girl bus conductor like me by 
my open admiration of her little patent-leather bon- 
net. She was the cheeriest person, punching tickets 
with blue, cracked hands. '"Nk you — 'nk you," with 
each ticket, which brought tears of gratitude to my 
eyes. 

"Hurry on," she admonished, and "Off you go" 
to a clinging one when the bus was full. Ringing the 
bell if she was below, and stamping with her boot, as 
heavier boots stamped in the old days, when she was 
collecting on top. Alert, firm, and uncomplaining. 
One low youth must have whispered to her something 
more or less indecent. But she jerked her thumb up- 
ward. "Gaow on up," was her only response. 

A woman passenger's eye met mine. "A girl con- 
ductor killed a man in the Mile End Road for not 
much more than that," she remarked. 

"Good job, too," cheerfully commented an old gen- 
tleman opposite. 

I have found that we talk together in the buses 
now. But the talk is largely composed of growls — 
growls, for some reason, directed against the govern- 

53 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

ment. On my second bus of the day an old man was 
acting as conductor, his locomotion slow and painful. 

^'He's suffering," a friendly fat woman confided to 
me. "An old man goin' up them stairs! But a body 
must get wot 'e can these d'ys." 

''I thought there was a great shortage of men 
for jobs," I protested. 

''That's what the government s'ys— sittin' in their 
warm offices!" 

I might have believed her if she had not called the 
offices warm. I knew then she was a disturber. Rather, 
that she was a disturber until the old conductor, 
whom she had been pitying, gave her a laying-out for 
pulling the bell at the wrong time. He may have been 
weak on his legs, but his language was still forcible. 
She got out — got down — blackguarding him as freely 
as she had upheld him, and moved toward the aristo- 
cratic district as her natural habitat. 

While they may snarl at each other, or against the 
others, something very nice happened on the first 
morning on our crowded bus. (Five standing inside 
during war-times.) A boy in bright -blue clothes, a 
tan overcoat, and scarlet four-in-hand tie swung him- 
self on with difficulty. He carried one arm in a cradle, 
but he was strong on his feet. Yet the man and woman 
nearest the door both rose simultaneously, not with 
the smallest expression on their faces which would 
suggest they were offering their places to him, but 
just getting up because they were tired of sitting down. 
The boy took the man's seat, and his benefactor stared 
fiercely at the boot-polish advertisement that he 
might not be thanked. 

I poked the woman by me in my far corner. '' Is he 

a soldier?" 

54 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

"'Orspital case — thousands of 'em — thousands. It's 
well to put 'em in blue. We can't forget so quick." 

I sat back, feeling a little white. I had forgotten 
that I must meet the mutilated on the London streets. 
I peered out through the window which gave a view 
of Trafalgar Square. The color of khaki stamped the 
scene — it was the prevailing note — but three soldiers 
in blue were making their way through the crowd — 
through the crowd which made way for them — as there 
were but three legs for the lot of them. 

The police wished my picture that first day, and I 
contributed to their Rogues' Gallery one whose crimi- 
nality betrayed itself in every feature. It was taken 
in the Strand at one of those places where photographs 
are made while you wait — that is, if you are patient 
and have nothing to do but wait. In the interval I 
returned from the police station to fill a blank which 
was handed me. I was not allowed to make it out at 
the station itself, which I could easily have done, for 
fear of adding to the congestion. I must go forth into 
a traffic-striking world, buy pen and ink, and in some 
remote spot, where there would be no congestion, write 
down everything that was already in the passport. 

I don't know why I should have attempted to do 
this filling out in an eating-house. Restaurants are 
places in which to fill up, and as they are opened but 
a short time in the middle of the day, every one was 
intent upon doing it to the exclusion of all pre-war 
interests, such as reading a paper or giving one time 
and space to write down age and occupation with 
newly acquired pen and ink. 

As my morning sausage was '^ out " when I called for 

it — or on it — I was so ravenous as to order a steak 

in the most dishonest fashion. I was unintentionally 
5 55 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

dishonest, but the waitress had gone off to "holler" 
down tubes before I realized I had secured no meat 
coupons from the Control and was committing an 
offense. 

I did not appreciate this error until I saw the man 
at the next table give the waitress a very pretty 
pink coupon out of a dirty book when she brought 
him some roast beef. The beef portion was about the 
size of the coupon, and my sense of guilt grew heavier 
as I wondered how many pink slips I ought to give 
up — had I any — for a rump steak, probably four by 
eight inches. Early nursery rhymes went through 
my mind, which in no way helped the situation: 
''What! Lost your mittens, you naughty kittens, 
now you shall have no pie," beat in my brain. I had 
a vision of the attendants carrying back the steak, 
annoyedly, if I weakly explained I had lost my 
ration-book. Then some important-looking person 
would step forward to ask for my identity-card, which 
was not yet made out, as I had just arrived, and the 
whole dreadful story of my deception would be re- 
vealed. I had — I never had had — a ration-book. 
Every one in the restaurant would look at me — 
''Eating up our beef with her American tricks!" 

I thought, too, as I waited there consciously, of 
the men who order a meal in the Bowery eating- 
houses and devour it before they confess they have 
no money. They know they are going to be mauled 
by the bouncers (and one man was kicked to death), 
but they eat because they are starving, nature's last 
protest, eat miserably as the inevitable beating looms 
ahead of them. 

While I knew I should not be kicked — at least, not 
hard — I dismissed the idea of eating up the steak 

56 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

before confessing that my rations had not been issued. 
And I really did not know what to do (for all rules 
take on a vast importance when one first enters a 
country) until a pretty girl asked if she might sit 
down opposite me. Then I remembered how pleasant 
every one out of my terrible hotel had been to me 
that morning, even though wet and walking, and I 
simply told the girl all. 

She said it was not in the least ''frightening," 
and immediately gave me a pink coupon of hers, which 
she assured me she could very well spare, as beef 
was so expensive. A few years ago an English girl 
would not — could not — have made that confession, 
so I did what I should never have dared a few years 
ago myself. When the steak came I shrieked hoarsely 
over its vast proportions and begged her to accept 
a bit of it. But I had overstepped the times! 

However, she was willing to talk to me, following 
the innovation which I have already recognized in 
buses and on street-corners, and of this innovation 
itself I spoke to her — with happiness. She admitted 
it. She was young enough not to be annoyed over 
this breaking through the crust of custom, even 
though she had not reached the point when she could 
share my meat. 

"I dare say it comes from our directing soldiers 
so frequently, and talking to each other in the street 
over the wisdom of the directions we are giving. 
Then the air raids brought us together — hours passed 
in the tubes or in the houses of perfect strangers. 
We were the oddest mixture, murderers, no doubt, 
and cabbies, and flower-sellers, and awfully well- 
dressed women coming from parties, all in one church 

portico, for instance." 

57 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

"What a chance," I said to her — I spoke jerkily, 
between fierce dental attacks upon the steak — "what 
a chance for a second (chew, chew) Decameron! It 
was the plague which gathered (chew) that brilliant 
company together (chew, chew, chew). What if each 
individual in that portico had told his or her life 
story (four chews), with that thundering terror over- 
head (down the red lane at last!), and all of them in- 
duced to complete the revelation by the unity of 
common impending death? Funny some writer doesn't 
do that!" 

The young lady looked at me slightly askance. 
"I don't suppose they would print them in these 
days — stories like the DecameronJ' She blushed deli- 
cately. "I have heard about them, but we cut them 
out when we came to Italian literature." 

I endeavored to console her. "Well, the plots 
would be different; you see, those people were Latin." 

Her brow cleared. "Of course, English stories would 
be different, wouldn't they?" Dear British child! 
Accommodating herself as bravely as she could to 
an earthquaking age, yet with a belief that its 
morals and manners were not of the mild Quattro- 
cento. 

She brought a blush all my own to older cheeks 
when I caught her smiling eyes as I asked for cream 
on the rice-pudding. "I can do very well without it," 
I hastily assured her. 

"I hear you have everything you want in the 
States, so I fancy it will be fearfully hard for you in 
England." 

I wouldn't have it that it was hard, and I wouldn't 

have it that we had everything we wanted. Then, 

and since then, I have found myself pitifully eager 

58 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

to have been a sufferer in the war, and rather to boast 
of the sufferings. Various exaggerations creep into 
my story of our self-denials. New York offices in 
which I worked greAV colder and colder in the telling 
(and goodness knows they were cold enough on those 
awful Mondays with zero weather outside). Wheat, 
according to me in London, went out of my life long 
before we ever thought of a war. And as for sugar 
— I rolled up my eyes (she had accepted one of the 
lumps of sugar I had providentially carried with me) 
— I could not complete the sentence. I was so over- 
come by the recollection of the sugar conditions. 

"Surely you had plenty of sugar?" she asked. 

''We had none." I could say this very simply, 
without any frills in the voice, as it was nearer the 
absolute fact than anything I had yet told her. 

"But wasn't there 'any?" 

"There was plenty." 

"Who got it?" 

"You did." 

"Oh, I sa,jl I presume the penalties were severe?" 

"No, we were simply asked not to use it." I tried 
to be casual, but wicked pride was bursting out 
through ever}'' pore. 

"Extraordinary!" granted the young lady. "Ex- 
traordinary!" 

At one time I thought it was pretty fine myself, 
but now that I am over here I find that it was just 
child's play. I wanted to tell her, too, that I felt 
I was just a child to her — a child in experience and 
understanding and control. But with all that, she 
was so shy and young she would have believed me to 
be eccentric, which is unforgivable to youth. "Young- 
er than I am, and with white hair!" she would have 

59 



AN AMERICAN'S J.ONDON 

inwardly commented, and put me down as a vain 
person. 

By nightfall I had returned to the police station 
of my district, and took my turn in the little room, 
which was small, yet, unlike those chambers appro- 
priated for the same uses in Latin countries, was not 
overpowering with the smell of humanity. Next to 
a manor farm-house in France, there is nothing to 
touch a post-office or prefecture for ancient, unchanged 
air. 

There were three amiable constables in attendance 
— perhaps I should say police officials — variously 
permitting bold spirits to go to Birmingham; ad- 
monishing a lady who had changed her address with- 
out immediate notification; trying to figure what 
could be done for a Dutchman who had lost his pass- 
port, and who, as far as any one could see, could 
neither leave England nor live in it; going endlessly 
through their routine with meticulous suavity. 

In spite of my photograph I did not feel guilty 
when my turn came. The London police never ter- 
rorize me. They suggest', in the discharge of their 
duties, that they are on my side so long as I behave 
myself, and that they would rather I'd be good than 
bad — that it would be more convenient to them if I 
remained good. 

In America, as each policeman enters upon his daily 
duties, he glares around him as though eager for a 
fight. Figuratively, he carries a meat-ax in one hand 
and a book of ^'Don'ts" in the other. I don't know 
who first defined the district that the policeman con- 
trols as "beats," but it suitably expresses the watch- 
word of their majesties. Yet a New York policeman 

will give you as much assistance, if you need it, as a 

60 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

constable in London, and a good deal more general 
information. I suppose it is because our men are 
largely mustered from the left of the Irish Channel 
(facing north) , while the bobby comes from the right. 

The officer who took me in charge (you understand 
me, I hope?) said, while preparing my identification- 
book, that his wife and little boy came through the 
air raids all right. The information was offered me 
out of a clear sky — indeed, I suppose an air-raid talk 
should come from a clear sky. However, his neigh- 
bor's missis and her little girl — the one on his left; 
the neighbor on his right was a widower — those two 
were fair subjects for a mad'ouse. The little girl 
couldn't sleep without an mnbrella over her 'ead. "In 
a manner o' speakin'," he completed, ''you must fight 
being afraid, just as you've got to fight everything 
else that you don't want to get you. Here's your 
book, madam; carry it everj^where, and if you change 
your address be sure to tell me." 

He was a very nice young man, and I decided to 
change my address and keep him informed just as 
soon as somebody died somewhere in London so that 
I could get the room vacated by .the corpse. 

I continued my reflections as I mounted a bus 
and swayed uncertainly on the top of it. There was 
no room to sit down, but I was lucky to get any 
kind of a lift. The great delivery-vans of the drapers' 
shops were taking their clerks home from work. Open 
drays were packed with city men. The few taxis 
had their flags hooded, as though they would never 
need to signal a lack of custom again. Private cars 
were even more rare, and when the crowd on our 
bus would discover a big limousine with a single oc- 
cupant they would hoot derisively. 

61 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

I thought of our surface-car strike in New York 
City in 1916, and of the packed motors of the rich 
as they gave the working-girls a hft if they were going 
in the same direction. And I also thought of the 
placards even now pasted on the windshields of our 
private motors: "A soldier is welcome." And of the 
many uniformed boys who clung to hospitable run- 
ning-boards. 

And suddenly, for the first time in my life, I grew 
homesick, and had to drive back the tears so that the 
Britishers, who had many better reasons for crying, 
should not see me. I was perplexed over being home- 
sick. Hitherto, it has always seemed to me that the 
brown earth was our home, and nationality but a 
trick to keep people safely herded. Now I wanted a 
flag to wear in my hat! 

I have continued feeling this way, and I am not 
sorry, except that this sudden localization of my af- 
fections may not grant me the open mind which has 
been pleasing to foreigners when I write of their 
patria. However, I reflect, if my countiy appears 
to be absolutely the best to me, every one else's country 
must be absolutely the best to him, and the Englander 
would, 'way down in his heart, think me horrid if I 
let my own land suffer greatly by comparison — even 
though what I may say of his island is not always 
pleasing to his palate. So, since I admit I am home- 
sick, I present this little story of a London-after-war 
experience as a purely prejudiced one — the expression 
of an individual. At least, it is seen through the eyes 
and heard through the ears of a woman who, a decade 
ago, paid a British income tax, and who felt that the 
privilege of living in England was well worth the 

tithe. 

63 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

Defining my sensations more closely on that second 
night in London, I realized that I was feeling the lone- 
liness of crowds and the vacuity of traveling un- 
comfortably toward a destination which held no 
pleasing attractions. I do not wish to step aside — 
on a lurching bus — to moralize, and I am no imper- 
sonator of male roles, but for the moment, on top of 
that bus, I was a tired man going home from business 
with a vision ahead of a dirty flat, a slatternly wife, 
and a bad dinner. Always before I have had some- 
thing more or less pleasant to go back to — if it was 
only a sizzling steam-heater in a rented room. I 
had not thought of the dull despair that must be in 
many a petty clerk's heart over the ugliness of 
''Journey's End." Small wonder they drop off at the 
corner saloon. Had my impersonation of the male 
continued vivid, I might have invaded a pub. myself, 
for the bars were just open, and a bucket brigade 
was pouring steadily through the doors. 

I was not entirely alone, however. I had one com- 
panion that seldom left me. Fear now stalked by 
my side, crept under my umbrella, froze my hot- 
water bag at night — fear of the premiere, still a week 
ahead. And I had no one to "plug" for me — not 
even a two-dollar mental healer to tell me that I 
knew my lines. 

Now that officer, back at Bow Street station, was 

proud of his family because they had fought fear. 

But, inversely, it must have been easier for them to 

fight because he was proud of them. I was alone with 

Fear, on top of a bus, and I had no one to tell me to 

be brave or be proud of me if I was. I had to do it 

all by myself — and not get any compliments. It 

occurred to me that it wasn't worth while, this 

63 / 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

continual fighting for everything, and that it would 
be much better to topple off and be run over by a 
rich limousine with one occupant, ''Death by mis- 
ad ventm^e," would be the comfortable verdict, and 
I could be fairly certain that the others on the bus 
would kill the rich one in the limousine. 

Then, as I looked up and down the massed street, 
with thousands of us swaying high in the air (gro- 
tesquely like a crowd of holiday-makers on elephants 
at the Zoo), I thought how funny it would be if this 
idea were to come simultaneously to every one's mind 
and we would all go hopping over into the Strand, 
shouting, '"Tain't worth it!" At this picture I 
laughed out loud, ■ so that the girl next to me for no 
reason laughed, too, and then every one began to 
laugh, and I saw — saw clearly — that the mere fact 
that they weren't hopping into the Strand, were cling- 
ing to the top for dear life, yet were laughing, showed 
that it was worth it. So I decided I had better stick 
it out for a little while longer — if only out of curiosity 
to see how I am going to end! 




Chapter VI 

A London Hotel. 

'HY do we rail at the poor because they 
are dirty and ill-smelling? Why do we 
say that any one can keep clean? Curious, 
that I had to come to London to get an understand- 
ing of their troubles. I have always considered my- 
self fairly well in touch with their miseries. There is 
just one way to understand cold, and that is to be 
cold; just one way to appreciate the heroism of the 
clean [poor, and that is to visualize the ice in your 
basin, as you shiver in j^'our bed — and put off the 
bath till the morrow. 

Certain pioneer mothers will now say they always 
broke the ice in their basins — after shaking the snow 
off the bed-quilt which had crept in through the in- 
terstices of the log-house (the snow, not the bed-quilt, 
crept in) . But certain pioneer mothers went on down 
to roaring kitchen fires. In all London there seemed to 
be no place to thaw out. Beechey, four miles away in 
Chelsea, was living pro tern, with an English lady who 
was reported to have a fire. And within the last few 
days I have gone up there when any kind of a convey- 
ance offered itself, that I might get Vv^arm — no, less cold 
— at this grate. By entirely engulfing the fire — keeping 
every one else away from it — I could warm either the 
left foot or the right foot, the left hand or the right 
hand, the small of the back, or — by kneeling — my nose. 

65 



^AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

My nose continued very much in evidence. But, in 
the mean time, the other excluded parts of my body 
grew so cold from the frigidity of the drawing-room 
that it was hardly worth the four-mile trip. 

And while this was chilling, the chance remarks of 
Beechey or her English friend were even more dispirit- 
ing. There was a gas grate in the dining-room, but 
they had ''rather outrun their allowance" — a neigh- 
bor had been heavily fined last week. There might 
have been a more cheerful glow simulating warmth in 
the electroliers, but the Control thought that ''fifty 
units" a quarter should be enough for them, and, 
while it was not enough, they must now live up — or 
down — to the allowance and sit in semi-gloom. 

In 1916 I remember how I was afraid of the army 
when I was in France — in terror of disobeying orders. 
Now I have developed a fear of the Control, a some- 
thing which I will never see, but of which I have a very 
definite picture. It is a huge creatiue with millions of 
feelers waving over us all — with eyes in the feelers. 
It has a shaggy head which cannot be turned by an 
attractive hat or the beseeching eye of a gray-haired 
woman. There is nothing larky about a British Con- 
trol. It is an honest beast. 

I don't know why this fear did not enter my joints 

in America on gasless Sundays, coalless Mondays, 

beefless Tuesdays, and a generally curtailed existence. 

As a rule we followed all the admonitions and when 

we were fined ("we" being a business firm) we put 

up repentant posters in our shop-windows and tried 

hard to be good. I think we were not scared in the 

United States, because we knew that there really was 

enough, somewhere or other, in our country, and here 

we know that not only is there not enough at the pres- 

66 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

ent, but that there hasn't been for four years. And 
if we do use up our coal, gas, electricity, and food 
rations, we can't get any more because there aren't 
any more. 

I have arrived at another conclusion which ob- 
trudes itself unpleasantly whenever I grow impatient 
with any conditions : I have no right in this country, 
anyway. No alien has any right in England now, 
unless he is on a war mission. There are plenty of 
artists over here who could keep the public well enter- 
tained. But since we have come over, by jinks! we 
must keep our mouths shut. 

I am keeping mine shut, letting off steam only in 
these pages, but I must confess that there is a great 
deal going on in the back of my American brain. I 
am wondering if one with means couldn't be com- 
fortable over here, really decently warm, by the exer- 
cise of a little American ingenuity. These people 
accept their discomforts with magnificent stoicism. 
It's a great quality — it has carried them through the 
trying hours of war; but — I dare to write it down — 
a little more rebellion and a little less acceptance 
would have rendered this nation a greater service. 
Rebellion is healthy. It is growth. It is now in the 
air of the world, and something good will come out 
of it. If the people rebel in their new-found pros- 
perity over early civilities, why should not all 
England rebel over discomforts and, though old 
forms must be broken down to accomplish these 
pleasant results, bear in mind that these ends 
justify the means? Of course it is easy for me to 
say this. It is nothing to the American to tear down 
customs. We rather enjoy it. It is like repapering 

a room. The old design is soon forgotten, and we 

67 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

find the newer forms more attractive because they are 
new. 

I wonder if there would be any way of beating the 
game in a manner which should please the grim Con- 
trol and bring comfort to the individual. Par exemple 
we had no rehearsal, and a black evening loomed 
ahead of me. I had tried several of the hotel restau- 
rants, hoping to find a warm one, but either the wait- 
ers were on strike or they could dine only their own 
guests. But the rooms could not have been very 
warm — not ''warm through." Some of us may know 
the hall-bedroom temperature. First you think, ' ' How 
pleasant," then you take off your wraps, to find that 
''heated from the hall" is your landlady's first and 
last lie. 

The evening was so unpromising that I accepted 
an invitation to dinner, even though I had to wear a 
low gown and didn't know the hostess. I went with 
Beechey to a far house reached by short trips on 
many buses and long waits on frozen corners. 

She improved my mind as we waited on these cor- 
ners. She said one of the great English poets had 
lived out the end of his life in this charming house 
which we were coming to some time or other, where he 
had been so comfortable that he had done no work 
within its walls. This appealed to me. If I found 
the house to be as she represented, I, too, would give 
up work and refuse to leave its pleasant confines until 
the constable carried me out and deposited me in 
33 bus. Yet, after ten minutes within its icy confines, 
one would have thought the poet could have there 
produced his most passionate lyricS; if they had to 
be born out of misery. It was a large house, and it 

was peopled by one small, very pretty lady with a 

68 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

cold in her head which had a permanent air about it. 
Her long halls were like outdoors, her huge bedroom 
a degree warmer, her large drawing-room fairly com- 
fortable, and her great dining-room indescribable. I 
had shed three wraps in the hall, and I had recourse 
to them, one at a time, as the dinner progressed. I 
would have enjoyed tying my fur stole across my nose, 
but feared that would call attention to the chill I 
was undergoing. 

She was a sweet little lady, sniffing and chattering 
and proudly displaying the joint of cold pork, which 
was all fat — and all of which I ate. The joint had 
been a triumph. I learned that she had registered at 
a certain butcher's for meat, and had quarreled with 
him two months ago. This was a mistake, for no 
other butcher would take her on (each butcher is 
allowed a certain amount of meat by the Control for 
registered customers, and a customer can register but 
in one place). So she had been without any of the 
Controlled meats until she could ingratiate herself 
with him. She confessed that she brought him a 
bunch of flowers. 

''It is good, isn't it?" she kept on saying. It was 
pretty bad, but I ate it. I mistook a bit of cheese for 
butter, in the course of the meal, and tried to spread 
it on my bit of bread. It flew off and fell on the floor 
and there was general consternation, to my intense 
embarrassment. I remembered how casual they used 
to be when things went wrong at table, and how I 
sometimes wondered if anything would ever matter 
to them. And now, "Cheese is hard to get," one 
solemn gentleman reproached. The loss had one ad- 
vantage — it hastened the dinner toward its end, and 
I am sure the others kept looking forward to their 

09 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

return to the fairly comfortable drawing-room and to 
hot coffee, which my hostess ''hoped" we were going 
to get. 

That we were all looking forward to the drawing- 
room is my point. Why did not this little person 
close her barn of a house, concentrate the heat, and 
live in one room? She was alone, she was not enter- 
taining largely, and, by her own admission, she had 
only three gowns left to her name, two to be hung on 
hooks behind the most modest curtain, and one to 
be worn. Yet she covered at least twelve hundred 
square feet in the daily routine of dressing and eating. 
I dared suggest that concentration to her, but, "I 
couldn't do that, could I?" she bravely sniffed. "The 
servants wouldn't like it." 

I did not adventure farther with the thought that 
the servants wouldn't like anything any more, any- 
way. But, when they did begin to like things again, 
they would take flats to stairs, single rooms to suites, 
and not despise their mistresses either. 

The parlor-maid was already despising her that 
night, and would pay no heed to the bell which rang 
an appeal or two for coffee. We could hear the 
jingling after each half-revolution of the bell-handle. 
We could hear the potent silence that followed. It 
was eloquent of the times. 

The little lady shrugged her shoulders. "They 
won't bring it. It's Sunday, and they won't serve 
Sunday nights. Down at the bridge they meet every 
night and talk of their wrongs — it's awfully creepy." 

"It's like the French Revolution," put in a gentle- 
man, pleasantly. "I'm quite calm about it myself, 
as I am not an aristocrat." I was inclined to think he 

was, but found it expedient to become a son of the 

70 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

people. I was glad I was an artist — it's only a step 
from being an artisan. My head is safe. 

So the hostess pulled a high-backed sofa up to the 
fire, and we all crowded onto it, while beautiful Pre- 
Raphaelite originals stretched their long goiter necks 
out of the picture-frames to look at us contemptu- 
ously. For the women of the Pre-Raphaelite school 
are, I am sure, the only Britishers who ever really en- 
joyed a frigid atmosphere. I am convinced that mere 
earthly Englishmen, who do not live on walls, but on 
floors, hate it as much as we do, yet, hating it, they 
accept it. They nobly — no, ignobly — do not complain. 

Almost warm, and quite somnolent from my fat 
pork, I watched those ladies on the wall, and tried to 
imagine what they would look like if Mr. Burne-Jones 
had painted a bus-conductor's uniform on one of 
them, or Mr. Rossetti put a chauffeur's cap on the 
low-coiffed hair of his type, or Mr. Watts stuck under 
the arm of one of his attenuated damsels the smart 
little ladder of the window-washer, who goes knicker- 
bockered about the streets. How inept those Blessed 
Damozels would be as compared to the brisk capa- 
bilities of to-day's Englishwomen — girls of medium 
size, brown-haired, with stout legs, and smiling, thin 
lips rather than thick, pouting ones. 

I came back from the shadows on the walls to the 
realities on the sofa. The guests were mostly of the 
artistic world, but you would never have imagined it 
by their conversational topics. Painting or paint never 
passed their lips — although rouge-sticks and powder 
were openly employed to cover the surfaces of the 
women's faces. "Madame Lebrun was always paint- 
ing herself. I don't see why I shouldn't," one of the 
visitors justified. I don't know what the Pre-Raphael- 
6 < 71 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

ite women would have thought of this calm, public- 
restoration-after-the-soup. Since it is purely feminine, 
they would probably have condoned it, but they would 
have been deeply irritated over the talk. Even to me 
it was at first as the Tower of Babel. 

''But you should have been at Margate — that one 
week — they simply rained down." 

''I was in London through twenty- two of them," 
returned Beechey, rather petulantly. 

''I was caught one night — my clothes were pep- 
pered. A man running behind me put out my coat- 
tail." 

"Put out your coattail?" I repeated, sternly. 

''Burning like a pre-war match — barrage, I fancy," 
most casually from a guest. 

They went on. No one paid attention to any other. 
But the ladies in the frames and I were listening to all 
of them. 

"I spent four hour's in one strange house I was never 
able to find again-^up some side-street" — this from 
Beechey. 

"I did that once. They gave me the finest drink 
of whisky I ever had in my life. Never could get a 
clue to that place, either" — very gloomily, from the 
gentleman who had deplored the lost cheese. 

"Ah, well," said the little hostess, brightly," I'm glad 
those days are over. When I found that arm near the 
bridge I felt — really — it was getting a little too thick." 

The Pre-Raphaelite beauties and the visitor from 
Indiana turned to look at her. Smiling, smoking, the 
little lady who was afraid of her parlor-maid went on : 
"I picked it up and threw it into the river. People 
were so jumpy those days, it might have given some 
passer-by a nasty shock." 

72 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

I looked at the painted beauties on the wall. ''You 
couldn't have done that," I whispered to them. 

''Neither could you," they retorted, as they scut- 
tled back into their safe, gilded homes. 

The hostess went to the outer door with us, lacking 
a servant to help with our wraps. A sound of popping 
corks came up from the offices in the basement. 

"Oh, I say!" she chirruped. "Those wretched maids 
are opening my wine! I'll have to speak to them — I 
will, really. There's always something terrible to do 
in England!" 

"If I wanted coffee," I confided to Beechey, in a 
false, happy tone, as we were making our way through 
dark mazes of wet shrubbery to the garden gate, "I 
would have it, if I had to carry it up myself." 
"Oh, no, you wouldn't," returned Beechey. 
"Well, then, I will know the reason why." 
"How are you going to find that out?" 
"By experience," I said, glibly; "I'll take a house." 
Beechey stopped short, her umbrella gouging at 
me. "Take a house! You poor girl!" 

"Why 'poor girl'?" still, liking the "girl." 
"It would be one horrible first night every day." 
At that the awful misery of the coming premiere 
came rushing over me. It had been crowded out for 
a little, "for want of space." I found myself repeating 
my lines under my breath, and making strange 
grimaces, which I turned into yawns if any one in 
the bus caught me. The only topic of thought which 
seemed successfully to dislodge that new part audits 
attending agonies from my mind were momentary 
visions of a small, warm house and a maid (who called 
me "modom") bringing up the Sunday-evening coffee. 




Chapter VII 

At the Housekeeper's. 

'ELL, it is over. The first night is over. 

I spoke all my lines. We are a success. 

The morning papers are heaped about 
me. I am in bed. There is a fire in my room. It is 
a very small room. I cannot unpack my trunks, but 
I don't care. The first night is over, and I have a 
fire in my room. 

I appreciate that I should have been more cheerful 
in the earlier chapters, or, at least, given the reader 
some encouragement that a good time was coming. 
Not that she (all my readers are ''she'^ cares a whoop 
about my comfort, but that reading of miseries may 
momentarily destroy her peace — the way those cheer- 
ful Russian and Scandinavian dramas affect us. We 
aren't a moujik or a Swedish pastor's daughter, but 
no Russian or Scandinavian writer has fulfilled his 
mission unless he makes us feel as wretched as those 
of whom he writes. My only hope is that my limita- 
tions as a litterateur will preserve any possible readers 
from discomfort. 

Remember, also, that in the fourth chapter I said 
it was going to be all right. This is called ''sustaining 
the interest." There were hours, before I got into my 
theater, when I would have taken even that back, had 
I not feared my gloom would affect the sale of this 
book. In those moments I had not counted on the 

74 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

playhouse as an institution, and on the men who form 
its working crew in England, and the women who 
wait upon you. We had not been able to use our own 
theater for the first few days' work, as a big produc- 
tion was on, playing matinees daily, and in the morn- 
ing rehearsing its own road companies — companies 
for the provinces, as they would say. 

But from that day when I came, wan and nipped, 
to the stage-door I began to thaw. I did not thaw 
from warmth, but kindness. The stage-door keeper, 
as fat as Falstaff— a retired policeman — welcomed 
me with strange rumblings, and the great bare stage 
opened wide arms of hospitality. Immediately my 
brain grew orderly — I was in my own milieu again. 
The business man must feel this when he comes back 
from his hectic holiday. Everywhere there was pre- 
cision and peace and courtesy. 

Surely the last to relinquish the manners of other 
times will be this old house of three centuries of 
drama. Yet what an array of changing fashions it 
has witnessed! White wigs — wigs of every kind — to 
quite honestly acknowledged baldish heads ; panniered 
gowns standing alone in their brocaded glory to our 
scant, abbreviated, modern frocks, which one can 
carry in a purse; gorgeous gold-laced coats and silken 
knee-breeches to a strange mustard-colored cloth 
which the earlier stage heroes never knew as khaki. 
Patches, patchouli, coaches at the stage-door, gal- 
lants in the greenroom, to to-day's simple, pleasant 
order of a sober people in their workshop. 

Falstaff had a small electric heater in his little 
cubicle, and here I was to be found between my 
scenes, absorbing its radiation like a vampire. Strictly 
speaking, or even loosely speaking, the stage was not 

75 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

aglow with anything but good will. This is the 
weather when the English lakes are frozen over for 
the first time in twenty-four years, when the ice in 
the water-trough at Hyde Park Corner has to be 
broken for the horses more than once a day, when 
old people, the papers record, are dying in their 
houses from exhaustion, occasioned by excessive cold. 
So, while I in no way reproach the single radiator 
on the stage (encaged in strong wire, to keep any one 
from falling against it and getting frost-bitten), which 
was supposed to heat three hundred and sixty thou- 
sand cubic feet of open space, I do not feel that it 
greatly changed any part of my circulation except 
the heart. I like to see a brave little old heater like 
that doing its best to give the foreigners what they 
want. The entente cordiale could not be better main- 
tained than by warming up the Americans. Unlike 
most radiators of its age, it was not noisy in its heated 
demonstrations. It did not begin to beat the Dead 
March from " Saul" in your comedy scenes nor snap 
at you every time you opened your mouth while ap- 
proaching the emotional climaxes in the play. Nor 
had it aspirations to be a druromer or a boiler-factory. 
Many a radiator in our newest theaters at home could 
learn a lesson in deportment from its retiring behavior. 
It did not feel it was the whole show. It was an 
aristocrat in aristocratic surroundings, and no doubt 
before the war used for its motto that potent one 
adopted by certain members of English royalty, 
"Ich dien." If I am not mistaken, there is German 
lettering on its side. But let this go no farther. They 
might uproot and cast it forth, and — if I hang for it 
— I will never look upon a steam radiator in action, 
no matter what its birthplace, as an enemy alien. 

76 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

There were two beautiful results from crouching 
over Falstaff's electric stove. So that, upon reflec- 
tion, I am inclined to accept the heater as a fire-pro- 
ducing modern magic, with Falstaff as a modern 
fairy. The first result was Mrs. Renn, and the magic 
worked in this fashion: I bent low over the white- 
hot wires, while the fat fairy bumbled. To those who 
do not believe in fairies his strange growls would have 
been a greeting to some one on the other side the glass 
door, but I know that he — she — well, the fairy, was 
saying, "Abracadabra," or whatever the incanta- 
tion is. 

At any rate, straightway after these cavernous 
sounds I looked up, and there, on the other side of 
the glass door, was a very pleasant little woman, 
gazing at me sympathetically. "One of the cold 
Americans," she was thinking, no doubt. Also, for 
she had a kind heart, "How sorry I am for her — 
so far from her home." 

"And who is that?" I said to the fat fairy. 

"That is a dresser, madam." 

"Can she dress me?" 

"She can." 

"I have a dresser!" And I rose and went out to 
talk to Mrs. Renn. 

I longed to say to her immediately after she had 

told me her name that I should have spelled it Wren, 

but I knew I must control my fancies when talking 

first with EngHsh dressers. It doesn't do to be thought 

"extraordinary," or to have her tell it about that 

"she does go on." Yet I feel I can soon take a chance 

with Mrs. Renn, and indulge myself in some of my 

American vagaries of doubtful humor, even if she 

does not understand me. 

77 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

She doesn't understand me up to the present writing 
when I am talking very plainly about hooks and floor- 
cloths and dry rouge. That is because she is not ac- 
customed to the American voice, so lacking in modu- 
lation. And I find myself putting cadences into my 
tones that I may make myself plain^ to her — British 
cadences which would drive my Hoosier relatives wild. 

She herself speaks with a rolling r that is absolutely 
unlike ours, although we of the Middle West also 
employ it. I am glad that she is from Somersetshire, 
and has not the enormous acuteness of the cockney 
— you might call it cuteness in America, and let it 
go at that. One is happy to have margarine when 
one cannot have butter, but it is artificial, and while 
the life of the player is supposed to be largely false, 
I think we are happier — more at home — when we 
are with extremely real people. 

But what I got hold of most firmly, on getting hold 
of Mrs. Renn (I shall have to write her down as Mrs. 
Wren, for I cannot call her Jenny, which happens 
to be her darling name, as theater dressers have the 
same place in the social scale as housekeepers, who 
are always "Mrs." whether married or no) — on 
getting hold of Mrs. Wren is the conviction that most 
of my warmth over here will have to come, not from 
material sources, but from fine spiritual emanations 
which kindle responsive fires in my own breast. It 
will be up to me to get warm, just as it is up to me to 
receive civil treatment. If I deserve it, I can have it. 
When Mrs. Wren and I visited the dressing-room 
which was assigned to me (she was very happy be- 
cause it was the large room with the chaise-longue, 
while I should have preferred the small room with the 

ottoman, which was more in proportion to the 

78 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

diminutive heater), I realized that it was my kindly 
dresser who would warm me up more than the small 
pipe-organ effect in the corner. And while I will 
have to work hard for everything, all response will 
come more easily in the playhouse than out of it. 

I felt very comfortable about the theater on my 
first day's rehearsals. I appreciated anew that I had 
some place to go each night that I would care about. 
And when one is forty, "going on fifty," to have one 
place to care about or one thing to do in every twenty- 
four hours is a gift from lenient gods. As I trudged 
back to the hotel on feet newly decorated with chil- 
blains (the only thing you can get for nothing in 
London), I continued grateful. Little processions 
marched across my mind, with me at the head of 
them. Me, very young, young, and middling young, 
going gladly to the theater in earlier years that I 
might check at the stage-door some real grief, to 
assume for three hours a ''pretend" one. The real 
griefs were waiting for me when I went out again, and 
I would put my hand to my brow, exclaiming, 
''Heaven help me, how long must this suffering go on! " 
But I knew, even as I said it, that the burden was not 
quite so heavy as it was when I went in to my work. 
And I grew to know, too, paying for the knowledge 
with little lines round the eyes, that some night I would 
come out and find it had wasted away to nothing. 
Then I would breathe deeply and cry, "Out of 
bondage!" also, "Never again!" This happened 
times too numerous to mention ! 

That these crises were not important, fading out 

with each newly acquired despair, goes to prove that 

the stage-door is a kindly and motherly old thing, 

swinging wide to let us weak ones in and, no doubt, 

79 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

wearing a smile. It is not to be seen, of course, but 
that is our fault if we do not know where to find the 
smile on a stage-door. The door is amused because 
ever since theater entrances were first brought into 
the world they have greeted the same kind of im- 
petuous people, and all those people have had the 
same impetuous heartaches, each cause of the heart- 
ache taking on ,an enormous significance, as though 
there never had been, or would be, another case like 
it. Yet I believe there are fewer scars on the high- 
beating ventricles of the players than on any others 
of us who stumble through the world. Possibly be- 
cause the actor wears his heart largely upon his 
sleeve, and sweet, fresh air is healing to all wounds. 

It was not until I reached the mazes of Holborn 
that I became disagreeably conscious of the fact that 
the life of the player without an emotional burden to 
check outside the door might grow insipid, and if that 
was the case I was going to have a very dull time 
ahead of me. I had eschewed Cora's complaint, and 
while I have some quiet sorrows of my own, they 
would die of fright if left alone with all these packages 
of sobbing, passionate griefs. I don't know yet how 
this is going to be worked out. Whether the mere 
business of saving salary, beating the tax-collector, 
and making them cry ("them" being the audience), 
or making them laugh, is going to be enough to go on 
with. But just for an instant I was sorry I had 
weeded all Coras out of my garden. 

Then I saw a crowd of boys in uniform going up 
Southampton Row, with their arms over the shoulders 
of an equal number of girls. One girl" with her hat off 
was resting her head on her boy's shoulder, and was 
not caring how cold it was. This appears to be one 

80 



AN yVMERICAN'S LONDON 

of the conditions of the times with which I will have 
to grapple. And I wondered if I had really eradicated 
the Cora weed, or if I would not find it spoiling my 
solemn study of social economics, choking out all the 
good little plants in my garden of thought. And 
while this was disconcerting to my plans, somehow I 
felt quite light, and not so cold ! 



rLsterisks in a book generally indicate that the 
author, having reached the only interesting scene in 
his story, is now going to skip it. The reader sighs 
and goes on to find if the happy pair have begun 
quarreling yet. 

My asterisks will mean, variously: telephone, per- 
formance, exhaustion of the topic under discussion, 
or a guilty feeling over the exhaustion of the reader. 
In the case of the preceding stars it was Beechey on 
the telephone, with the information that she ''had 
it." This news came to me after a series of prelimi- 
naries in which the telephone exchange first besought 
my number, then asked me if I was there, begged me 
four times to "hold on," again asked my number, if 
I was there, and, after a struggle with snapping wires, 
''put me on" to Beechey. 

Beechey wanted to know, if she really "had it, 
would I take it," and I said yes, that I would take it. 
For I knew that Beechey was talking of a ^^ maison- 
nette,^^ which has so seductive a name that any one 
would take it, even though he or she knew nothing 
more about a maisonnette than I did. It was charac- 
teristic of Beechey that she in no way referred to the 
success of the first night. Although she did ask me 

how I liked the leading man — that she thought him 

81 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

awfully good. While we talk a great deal about the 
close relationship of all arts, the painter is inclined 
to believe that his exposition of feeling is the only 
one worth figuring on. And I fear my friend looks 
upon the theater as a place where salaries are paid 
every week in return for a certain amount of mechan- 
ical expenditure. To her there is something wrong 
about any art that brings in regular wages, and, 
according to this reasoning, Beechey is superlatively 
an artist. 

But I am outrunning my story. You will be turning 
back to see if there are any asterisks to express a 
lapse of time cloaking a series of interesting events 
which might lead up to a room with a fire. One can 
understand a human entertaining any proposition in 
England that would lead to comfortable quarters! 
In spite of the gratifying discovery that the soul was 
going to be at ease through the kindness of the stage- 
door Falstaff and the Mrs. Wrens of life, I found the 
outward shell of me cracking and the vocal cords 
cracking along with it. 

It is all very well for the "inner man" to keep 
toasty (a mysterious creature that doesn't have to 
go out in the cold and has no chilblains on its feet), 
but on the day of the dress rehearsal I managed to 
croak out to Falstaff that I could not, would not, open 
the following night, unless I could get the chill out 
of my system. And at that, feeling sorry for myself, 
I would have drowned the fire in the electric heater 
if it had not been magic fire, by a sudden flood of 
tears — which would have been frozen if they had 
not been salt. It was here that the fat fairy performed 
a second miracle. His modus operandi this time ex- 
hibited itself more by a bodily effort than words, for 

82 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

he lumbered up many flights of steps, I sniveling 
behind him, till we came to a surprise room, as though 
part of the fairy spectacle left over from a Christmas 
pantomime. 

It was small, with sun streaming through its single 
window (and I am sure no sun was shining through 
other windows), a canary was singing in a gay little 
cage, and a fire was glowing in an old-fashioned grate, 
and, sitting among old-fashioned chairs, was the 
housekeeper. Next to the canary-bird the house- 
keeper was the youngest article in her room. She is 
a tall, fine-looking woman who laughs delightfully 
at all of my jokes, but who can be very firm when in 
the capacity of housekeeper. Next to her room was a 
warm kitchen, where a maid prepares meals if the 
English managers of the theater want them. All of 
this the housekeeper oversees, as well as looking after 
the whole theater, ordering the spirits for the bar, 
and, when a production is large, taking care of the 
costumes. 

I did not come under any of these activities. I 
was just a frozen actress, with a heavy role to play 
the following night and a voice that was going down 
rapidly in its effort to spend more and more time with 
the toasty ''inner man." Yet the housekeeper took 
pity on me, and when the dress rehearsal was over 
at midnight I found myself making my way along 
dim streets, to a part of the city strange to me, 
clunbing three flights of stairs according to direc- 
tions, and letting myself in with a latch-key to the 
narrow hall of her flat. Through the transom of a 
closed door I saw a flicker of light upon the ceiling — 
hght reflected from my grate — and this pillar of fire 
led me to my present blessed shelter, 

§3 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

The trunks followed by American Express, for there 
is in the city of London, at present, no swift method 
of transportation of baggage. There are two van 
companies which, if given sufficient time, will trans- 
fer your luggage or take it to a railway station, but 
the warning must be long and thoughtful. Trunks 
going to a station must be ready a day in advance, 
and I really don't know what the Londoner is going 
to do now that the four-wheeler is conspicuous only 
for its rarity, and the porter who once hung about 
the streets, eager for the job of ''mounting or de- 
scending" the baggage, is entirely absent. Certainly 
the Englishman will be lonely after having journeyed 
to and from the great stations for so many years with 
his boxes on top of his head, separated only by the 
roof of his square little cab> 

After I had packed my effects at the terrible hotel, 
I descended to the desk to pay my bill on the day of 
the dress rehearsal (it seems years ago, but it was only 
the day before yesterday) and made a little speech 
to the Crab. I was afraid to make it, but I felt that 
I must. I knew if she saw I w^as afraid of her it would 
have no weight, so I put some English intonation 
into my voice and was as condescending as possible. 

"I have found out that other employees outside 
of this hotel can be courteous to Americans, but my 
country-people don't know this when they first get 
off the boat and are brought here by their various or- 
ganizations. They think all England is going' to act 
as you do toward them, and they become hostile. 
I am going now — " 

The Crab was looking at me blankly, but at the 
words "going now" she opened the ledger opposite 
my room number. "Going now" was a language she 

84 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

could understand. However, I went on, "Yes, I'm 
going, but I just want to say that a hotel clerk like 
you does more to create enmity between two coun- 
tries than all the bombs ever thrown at an archduke." 

She slapped the book and struck a bell. The 
anxious ones around the desk were very quiet, then 
a shrunken little man leaned over and said to her, 
shamefacedly, "If the lady is leaving, perhaps I can 
have her room." 

I turned away, but I heard the Crab. She was 
making hideous sounds like scratching laughter such 
as crabs would make, and they were all so eager for 
a resting-place that no one stuck up for me. She had 
the upper hand. She will have it for a long time, and 
then things will be all right. 

Just the same, I am glad I got it off my chest. Cour- 
age is a quality that gathers force with its expenditure. 
Whenever I thought during the next two days of the 
horrors of the first night I would make a little speech 
to myself: ''Now you were brave with the Crab, 
you can be brave over your part. You can play that 
part; you know your lines." 

It was some consolation to me that I was not the 
only one in need of ''treatment." On the night of 
the dress rehearsal I heard our nice young juvenile 
bleating piteously for the address of a Christian 
Scientist, and I knew what he was after. I went to 
him when there was no one else around. "If you 
will just say 'Courage' a number of times as you 
wait for your entrance cue, it will really help you," 
I advised. 

He was a scoffer in life — as the young are — but he 
listened to me eagerly. "You think it won't be rot?" 

"I am sm^e of it. Courage is a stimulating word — 

85 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

anyway, it won't hurt. That's the best of mental sug- 
gestion, UnUke medicine, it can't do you any harm." 

He was very gruff about it, but: "Don't tell any 
one; I'll try it, I'll be all right on the night — it's 
the dress rehearsals that upset me." He stalked away 
as though we might have been discussing bull-terriers. 

I knew then that he was brimful of vitality and 
that I possessed little. I can rehearse forever, and 
before the most snarling managers who ever puffed a 
cigar out in the empty auditorium. These men do 
not make me nervous. I enjoy the working out of a 
character, the creating of it, but a big audience tears 
me to pieces. The effort to give to so many of them 
devours my slender strength. This isn't fancied. 
Ask a teacher if she is not more exhausted at the 
end of a lesson to a big class than to a small one. 
To be sure, we enjoy the stimulation from a large 
house, for it is more apt to be responsive, but we pay 
for it as the creature eats us up. If any of you should 
chance to see me on the night that the audience is 
slender, don't feel sorry. At least I am playing easily 
and without strain — which means naturally and my 
best. 

So, on the night preceding the opening, while the 
boy stood outside his entrance, thinking ''Courage," 
in hope of pleasing the handful which constituted the 
powers out in front, I was flitting through fairly 
serenely, with Mrs. Wren to hearten me as the steam 
went down and the large dressing-room with the 
chaise-longue grew more icy. Beechey was with me 
for a while. That is one of the joys of English thea- 
ters: the friends of the artist are received by the 
door-man as though they were not burglars with a 
kit of tools in their gold-mesh purses. Nor is the 

86 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

player himself regarded as an inmate of a peniten- 
tiary, with no privilege beyond that of slinking through 
the stage-door in the hope of attracting as little at- 
tention as possible. It was made plain to us before 
the last rehearsal that no human being could step 
upon the stage proper save those concerned in the 
play, and this is intensely right, but a visitor can be 
accommodated in the greenroom, and sit in the beau- 
tiful old Chippendale chairs, just as though Mr. 
Chippendale had cunningly contrived them for the 
comfort of the friends of actors with the first inter- 
lacing of his ribbons. 

Beechey, who, as I say, seems to have no interest 
in the play beyond hoping I will remain for a long 
time — and liking the leading man's performance, if 
not mine — had come to report on the possibilities of 
securing the maisonnette to which I have already (in 
this very de Morgan, wrong-end-first style of telling 
a tale) referred. While the housekeeper's room means 
warmth and everlasting gratitude, there is no accom- 
modation even for the hat-box of shoes. The type- 
writer is under the bed, as silent as a thief in the 
night, and I have hanging-room only for my seven 
outside coats, which I usually have on all the time, 
anyway. 

It seems, according to Beechey and Mrs. Wren, 
that you have to stand in front of a maisonnette a week 
or two before the departing tenant leaves it, in order 
to secm-e it as your own. I have always wondered 
how the cuckoo managed to lay its egg in some 
other bird's nest, and I suppose it follows much 
the same plan. The cuckoo is supposed to be a 
lazy bird, but Beechey assures me that nothing 
is more arduous than standing in front of 
7 87 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

maisonnettes — or nests — and waiting for the tenant 
to go out. 

I had no clue to maisonnettes beyond asking if the 
present possessors, when they fle\v off the nest, flew 
off sadly or happily. From observation I have no- 
ticed if you do not like your domicile you always 
stand on the step, after opening the door, take a long 
breath, as though trying to wash out the atmosphere 
of your home and go springily down the street, far, 
far away from it. My friend replied that she had 
found they left the house sadly, but honestly added 
that they were an officer and his family "moving on" 
like little Joe, and may have been sad because they 
must fly to nests they wot not of. "This maisonnette," 
said Beechey, giving me the address, "has the charm 
of being in Chelsea." 

"Is that a charm?" I asked. 

"Oh yes, madam," said my darhng Mrs. Wren. 
My new dresser was down on her knees, picking at 
the folds of my new gown. She never stops picking 
at me, in the dressing-room or in the wings, but I 
don't mind. She takes an interest in dresses and ad- 
dresses — in anything that is mine. "Chelsea is a 
very good address." 

"Is it important that I have a good address?" I 
asked Mrs. Wren. 

"Oh, madam, yes," she repeated, forcibly. "Officers 
must have them, since they are officers, and actresses 
should have them, since they are actresses. You can 
do 'most anything you want if you have a good 
address, madam." 

This temptation to lead an irregular life under the 

guise of a good address clinched the matter, and 

Beechey departed to take up her station outside the 

88 




^r^j 



<■ 






I 
\ 



^. { 










"this maisonette has the charm of being in Chelsea" 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

maisonnette, having promised to attract no attention 
by "cuckooing." And so the rehearsal went on until, 
like everything good or bad, it came to an end, and 
I prowled "home" to said glowing fire welcoming me 
through the transom on said ceiling. Poor strollers! 
Their last roosting-place is always "home." 

******* 

I had a weak belief when I went to bed the night 
before last — the night of the dress rehearsal — that 
this interest in the maisonnette would paint in a slightly 
roseate hue the usual black hours preceding an 
opening. But I awoke with a terrible weight on my 
stomach, so clearly defined that I thought at first it 
was my breakfast tray. I found myself breathing ir- 
regularly, as though I had run up many flights of steps, 
and then— ah, old cycle of old fears! — I began repeat- 
ing my cues, my lines, and every one else's lines. 

I was annoyed with myself. I had said only the 
day before, if I could just be warm I would be in- 
vulnerable to any further woe, now the laughing 
housekeeper was laying my fire, and it was as nothing. 
I watched her as she made the fire, and asked ques- 
tions, with a view to forgetting. One can do this for 
a fraction of a second, then the horror comes creeping 
back, and except that it might lead to greater fears 
emanating from greater weakenings, I was inclined 
to lie back and bellow, "I am afraid! I am afraid!" 
in utter abandonment. 

The housekeeper was holding a newspaper out in 
front of the grate to encourage the reluctant flame. 
My mind made a short excursion to Liverpool, to 
the porter with the splintered wood in his pocket, 
to the rich lady with the plaster laths in her bag, 
for it was impossible to buy Idndling in London at 

89 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

that moment. However, she was using some little 
compressed blocks of charcoal, w^hich were popularly- 
supposed to be fire-lighters. After she had held the 
newspaper up for a long tune, I asked her where was 
her tin blower — going back to Indiana hearthstones — 
and she had never heard of a tin blower. She had 
always used a newspaper. 

''Does every one else use a newspaper?" 

Oh yes. The Morning Telegraph was the best. 

She advised me to take in the Morning Telegraph if I 

went into housekeeping, so as to have a good blower. 

"Then the women all over London are now holding 

newspapers before fires?" 

She admitted that they were. 
"How long do they hold up the papers?" 
Wlien I found that they held them up at least six 
minutes, and we both agreed that there must be 
100,000 open fires warming 8,000,000 people, I dis- 
covered a pencil, and on the cover of my typed part 
(stuck under my pillow so that the lines would soak 
in) I did some rapid figuring. And by the time the 
housekeeper retiuned with my breakfast tray I was 
able to tell her that 10,000 hours, or 58-f weeks, were 
wasted every day in London holding up Morning 
Telegraphs before bashful flames — and longer, if the 
household took in a smaller newspaper. The house- 
keeper laughed and said, "Fancy!" And neither of 
us could devise a way of turning this waste time into 
some use, unless you could read the Telegraph while 
holding it up before you. But one conclusion was 
certain, when this little talk was over: the housekeeper 
intended to go on holding up newspapers, as she had 
always done, and I intended to find some way of 
obviating it, if the maisonnette should become mine. 

9Q 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

I thought as much as I could of the maisonnette, 
and hoped it would have a garden and be called 
"Mon Bijou.'' After the dress rehearsal there didn't 
seem to be a possibility of our play lasting more than 
a minute — an audience that could find anything to 
laugh at or cry over was beyond our wildest hopes. 
It was so bad that the American manager gave us 
up entirely, and told us to *'go on home, sweethearts, 
curtain at eight to-morrow." If he had cried : ''Great 
snakes ! You gotta put some hrnnor in this rehearsal 
if you freeze your feet off doin' it " we might have 
felt encom-aged. 

''It's the boat for us," said the juvenile, as we 
climbed the steps to our dressing-rooms. The juvenile 
was glowering at me, as he had not been very success- 
ful with "Courage." 

However, since I had come over to study social 
conditions, I would have had to stay, even though the 
play had not been a success and had folded its scenery 
like the Arab, and silently stolen off to the store- 
house. With this great mission ahead my conscience 
troubled me a little over writing of conditions in a 
maisonnette, but I continued to entertain the possibility 
of securing such an abode, as the prospect was allur- 
ing. I don't know why wicked imaginings are more 
apt to keep us distracted than soberer dreams which 
might be realized. We waste as many hours as the 
fire-builders of London conjuring up situations that 
could never possibly be part of our existence. We are 
not content with figuring on a probability. We change 
the color of our hair and speak in Russian or any of 
the Balkan tongues. 

Perhaps the " we " offends you. This is a book con- 
fessing my shortcomings, so if the "we" creeps in, 

91 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

pray remember I am editorially speaking, as a scrap 
of a girl, I spent so much time day-dreaming that I 
looked forward, with a good deal of relief, to myself 
as a grown-up, when I would surely apply my mind 
more industriously to the real problems of life. And 
when I grew up I continued to look forward to grow- 
ing older, that I might "put away childish things." 
And now that I am — oh, undoubtedly — older I know 
perfectly well that I am never going to stop day- 
dreams, and that they will always continue foolish. 
It is a sad admission, but I suppose I must go on, in 
my mind, saving the United States President from 
the bullet of an assassin every time we read of a crank 
prowling round the White House. I will be stepping 
modestly forward to receive the Legion of Honor for 
the discovery of a cholera cure, and I will deprecatingly 
allow King Victor Emanuel to fasten a diamond upon 
me for the rescue of ten thousand Italians in a 
Sicilian sulphur-mine. I will do all those crazy young 
things, just as I have within the last few days — in 
spite of my gloom over my approaching failure — 
been repeatedly backing out of the royal box in our 
London theater after King George has assured me 
that I was "the best thing in the show." 

I will not ask the reader if she, too, builds these 
foolish castles inhabited always by the same heroine. 
I can't believe it possible that the world could go 
on combing its hair, having its teeth fixed, making 
money for the children's shoes, if there were a lot 
of Simple Simons like myself. But there is just one 
way of finding out if you are a Simple Simon, too; 
if you really are simple, you will own up to it, as 
I have. 

Although it was raining, although I had a fire, I 

92 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

could not stay in my room. I began to roam the streets 
nervously, as I have done so many times before. I 
went into a big shop, run on American Hues, to have 
my hair shampooed; not that I needed a shampoo, 
but that the shop was American. And yet- not very 
American. A house of any kind takes its character 
from the country it is in. The difference may be in 
the cashier's desk, or the iron rails of the staircase, 
or the "Up" and ''Down" indicators of the elevator, 
or it may be nothing as definite, but a shop soon be- 
longs to the nation to which it caters. 

Tips are not given the attendants in the hair- 
dressing department, and this is not American at all. 
Moreover, the young woman who looked after me 
refused the shilling I offered her — and obeying the 
regulations is not American, either. She was a nice 
young girl, and, since she had promised to take charge 
of my hair while I am in London, I told her I would 
bring her tickets for the theater where I was playing. 
I don't know why I told her I was playing, as I knew 
I wouldn't be after the first or second night. But I 
went on recklessly lying — probably to make myself 
interesting, so that she would enjoy doing my hair 
even though there was no tip ahead to encourage her. 
I also said I lived in Chelsea, yes, in a maisonnette; 
probably I wanted to see if she would treat me with 
less respect upon learning of "Mon Bijou." But she 
did not seem impressed one way or the other, merely 
asking if it was not hard going to and fro in 19 bus, 
if I had to "carry my instrument," and I was so be- 
wildered at this that I assm'ed her my instrument 
was not heavy at all. Indeed, I did not realize until 
I reached the un-American clicking doors that she 

must have thought, if I "played" in a theater, that I 

93 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

was in the band! I should have said ''acted." Still, 
it was a nice shop, but not American. 

Her touching upon bus 19 reminded me that I 
might catch it and go out to see for myself what a 
maisonnette was, as the address was in my purse. I 
don't know why we say "catching" a tram, or "catch- 
ing" a car, or even "catching" a bus, in the United 
States, for all three of these vehicles stop for us. 
But over here, the only way to get a bus, except at 
far, undesignated intervals, where it comes to a full 
stop, is to leap upon it as it is making evident efforts 
to run over you. 

I can't imagine why Britons should have felt the 
loss of fox-hunting during the war, when this bus- 
catching game offers such rare sport. It is even more 
sporting. Unlike the fox, which does not attack you, 
but is always the pursued, a bus, upon discovering 
that you have picked it out for your quarry, charges 
directly at you, in no way slackening its speed, with 
all the tremendous courage of beasts of the jungle. 
If it does not succeed in jumping on you, it hoots 
derisively as you step back, and squirts liquid all 
over you, something after the manner of an animal 
highly prized for its fur — but not a fox. To be sure, 
a man cannot fall off his horse if he misses the step, 
and be trampled upon by horses coming up behind 
him, but he can fall in the mud and be run over by 
other motor-buses anxious to get in at the death. 
And he can talk just as interestingly of the day's 
run when his friends come to see him in the hospital 
as though he had a little plmny tail to show for his 
morning exercise. 

These fond fancies come to me now, but they didn't 

yesterday, as I rode, mud-splashed, after my third 

94 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

engagement with a 19 bus. Yet the struggle went on 
to keep distracted. At one period on the bus it 
seemed the most ignoble struggle in the world. This 
was when the vehicle halted, not at the usual stopping- 
place, and two nuns, one girl in khaki, and one old 
man arose from their seats near the door as four 
one-legged, very young men hopped on. All were 
friends, all were laughing. Only one was in hospital- 
blue, two were in officers' uniforms, and the fourth 
in civilian dress. He had, in the words of Mrs. Wren, 
been ''demobbed." 

There was a great collection of crutches after they 
were settled, and a stacking of them up in the little 
space under the iron staircase which leads aloft. 
Once the conductor accommodated himself to this 
space, but for the rest of our lives — my life, any- 
way — this little closet will be devoted to these sad 
trophies of the war. 

It was not the boy in hospital-blue that "got me," 
nor the men who would soon be "demobbed." It was 
the one-legged civilian, the civilian like myself, who 
set before me a consciousness of a new task that we 
can never finish. We must adapt ourselves to the 
vista of any street we may walk along, with at least 
one armless, or legless, or scarred boy within the area 
of our vision. We must remake our lives to this con- 
dition; must expend pity, yet never exhaust it; must 
become practical even while we remain pitiful; must 
accept these mutiles as though they were body-whole, 
since they are mind-whole, yet exquisitely discriminate 
that the burden we lay upon them is not too great 
for their physical limitations. 

The rebellion that is not new to me, that devoured 
me throughout France whenever I visited a hospital, 

95 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

began creeping into my veins as malaria returns to 
the sufferer of old. Yet the words of a French surgeon 
recall themselves for my comfort. He had been 
showing me what they could do for a man without a 
face, and I had contemplated the grotesque restora- 
tion after two years of hospital agony. 

"I think he would have been better dead," was all 
I could say of his handiwork. 

"Yes, madam, you think so. But the boy did not." 

And I suppose so long as the vital forces of a man 
continue that he really does want to live. Certainly, 
these four young fellows were getting a great deal 
out of a rainy afternoon. The civilian, more agile 
than the rest, made a bet that he could hop on top 
without his crutches, and did so; the three remained 
below to argue with the conductress — she was wearing 
her delightful tarpaulin bonnet — that they should 
only pay half-fare, since a portion of each of them was 
paying for what space they were occupying in France. 
The bus conductress looked delighted, but flustered: 
"Full fare, gentlemen; you've still something to sit 
down with," she retorted. For which she received 
sixpence from the major of the party for "being a 
good girl." 

Up in my far corner I pressed my face against the 
glass to look out upon the wetness of Cadogan Place, 
which continues a place of intrigue, with a gay air 
about it, even in bad weather. How surprised those 
officers would have been had they known my mental 
processes. "Can't you get anything out of those poor 
chaps?" I was saying to myself. "If they could go 
through their baptism of real fire, can't you go on to 
a full stage and speak a few fool lines without fear? 
Is it important to the world, to this terrible world 

96 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

dealing with vast complications, whether you give 
a rotten perfomiance or not? Good Heavens! it's 
all pretend, and it's only three hours. Can't you play 
you're a soldier for just one night? Here's a thought: 
Bob died fighting; he was an actor; how pleased he 
would be if he knew that some of his spirit was helping 
a comrade of a theater through an hour of trial. 
Show some of Bob's spirit, and go on fighting. You've 
got your legs and your arms and your eyes. You've 
even got a job — you're the luckiest of women." 

It worked. It worked for a while, but, would you 
believe it, by five o'clock I was inchned to think that 
the man with his leg off, and no first night ahead of 
him, had the best of it. I suppose we suffer over 
efforts that are really not important to the cosmic 
scheme because, after all, they are our way of ex- 
pression in life. If we didn't give a hang whether or 
not we succeeded, all of the little arteries that vein the 
peopled universe would atrophy; we would move on 
sluggishly, aimlessly, until we perished of inaction. No 
matter what our task is, it is ours, and we must care 
about it. I would not go on at such a boring rate, 
talking to whatever slender public this book may 
reach anent the trials of a business of which they 
will never be a part, if I did not feel that all of us, 
after one fashion or another, experience this terror 
which is attendant upon initiative. 

I am sure, too, that the hour comes to each of us 
when, enraged by this fear that seems about to engulf 
us, we cry, sternly: "I will not suffer this nonsense 
further. I will not be devoured by this monster of 
my own making," and straightway find that the tur- 
bulence has given place to calm. One might argue 

that if we did this with the first qualm, we could save 

97 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

ourselves a good deal of harassment, but it is only 
when I have reached the top note of suffering that this 
inner strength gathers its fierce forces for the ''Great 
Push." 

I made this speech to myself at 5.15, after I had left 
the little park upon which my maisonnstte gave. I 
had been walking about the square for some time, 
viewing the premises from different angles. On the 
whole, the house was not disappointing, although, 
like every other fond imagining, it was not what I 
had expected. It had no gate and no wall and no 
garden — at least, not in front. It was one of a hun- 
dred others in the square, so disconcertingly alike 
that if I were a man going out to a reunion of my 
alumni I should tie a large bow to my particular area 
railings (something with loops to catch on to), that 
I might locate my happy home upon my return 
without greatly inconveniencing the neighbors. There 
were no preliminaries to the front door beyond a white 
calcimined low stoop, yet I had always wanted one 
of these whitened bits of flagging for my own, and had 
once contemplated living in Philadelphia or Baltimore 
that I might be such a householder. 

I made a swift tour about the square immediately 
upon my arrival to see if there were any tablets in 
the walls. I understand that, next to tombstones, 
there are more tablets in Chelsea than any other part 
of London. Yet I was disappointed in this, and I 
presume the amazing respectability of the neighbor- 
hood had discouraged the artistic. To be sure, now 
and then a householder had painted his door an art 
shade. My door was mauve, which delighted me 
with its portent, and there were curtains to match 
at the ground-floor windows which looked directly 

98 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

upon the street. By tilting my umbrella up suddenly 
as I went by (I went by a number of times, screened 
by my brolly), I could see a fire blazing recklessly 
on the hearth in this room, and once, when a maid 
left the front door open to dispute the excellence of 
potatoes with the grocer's boy, I could look right 
through the shallow house, beyond another open door 
in the rear, and saw a garden with a tree in it. 

While I made a mental reservation that if the 
house became mine I would not leave the doors open, 
no matter on what tree I looked, it was the bare 
branches of these majestic friends which overcame any 
slight disappointment in "Mon Bijou." There was not 
only the one in the back yard — ''back yard" is never 
used in this country; it is very low — but magnificent 
creatures in the park were waving hospitable arms at 
me, taking away the bleakness by a decoration of 
myriads of little hanging balls. Although spring was 
a long way off on this February day, it is never diffi- 
cult to imagine its proximity if we have so much as a 
trunk on which to festoon our fancies. I always like 
to be where I can watch at least one tree go through 
its various processes of completing its summer ward- 
robe. It's the only creature I know which emerges 
well garbed from the hands of a home dressmaker. 
Even if one is languid over clothes, at the first little 
reddish bud one begins to collect samples and look 
in shop-windows. 

The trees had it, and I could scarcely keep from 

cuckooing myself when a tall officer and a short 

wife passed through the purple door and left their 

home "to darkness and to me." I was annoyed that 

Beechey was not on guard, although the night before 

she had muttered something, very practical for her, 

99 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

about going to see the agent. I particularly wanted 
her, as the size of the house made me uneasy. It 
was going to be too big for me. I would have to pay 
rent for four floors, yet, according to my argument 
as opposed to the methods of the lady in the suburban 
villa, I would not be living wisely if I used more than 
two rooms. And why was an obviously full-grown 
house called a maisonnette, anyway? 

Surely this was not a square of maisonnettes. The 
fine old dame sternly taking her airing in a bath- 
chair, rain or no rain, who issued from the door next 
to my purple one (hers was drab), could not possibly 
live in any abode with so gay a sound. Nor could 
the small boy up the street, who went in and out of 
his faded green door a dozen times in one minute, 
banging it, endure in a place where French must be 
spoken freely. I made one tm^n around the square 
closely behind the boy, hoping for hght from him. 
He was boasting to a companion of his huge feed of 
the night before: ''An' then I 'ad my tea, an' then I 
'ad another orange." His little companion was ragged 
and wistful. 

I produced two coppers from my purse, then dug 
for more, as one loses courage these days in London 
when it comes time to bestow largess, and I caught 
up with them as we completed the promenade, again 
approaching the purple door. "Boys," I asked, 
chinking the coppers, "do you know of any maison- 
nettes around here?" 

The boys eyed me, but respectfully, and the shabby 
one, hearing the coppers, ejected a reply — any reply 
for the coppers would do. "Lots of 'em 'ave 'em." 

"Lots of what have them?" I asked. 

"Persons." 

100 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

Oh! Then a maisonnette was an appurtenance— a 
summer-house, perhaps, in the garden. Just Uke 
Beechey to want me to Uve in an open-work estab- 
hshment! 

The boy continued well informed. "There is one of 
'em in there," jerking his thumb toward my door. 

"In the garden?" I pursued. 

He looked mildly surprised. "In the 'ouse." 

I was relieved. It was something in the house, then. 
No doubt put in extra, like a bath-tub. 

"Of what does it consist?" Very craftily from me. 

This had to be reframed three times. The shabby 
boy did not know, but my neighbor proved himself 
au fait with the word: "My dadda brings coal there. 
Hit's the ground floor and the basement, with the 
use of the barth." 

"My mother charred there oust," broke in the 
visitor to the square. And then, in a voice sepulchral 
with respect, "It 'as a geezer." 

''Awhatf' 

"A geezer, in the bath." 

I gave them the coppers. There was nothing more 
to be said. Naturally, the ground floor and the base- 
ment with the geezer in the bath would comprise a 
maisonnette. But what good would the bath be to 
me if the geezer stayed in it all the time? I knew my 
cockney; "an old geezer" was a frivolous elderly man. 
Still, I hesitated. Times had changed and, possibly, the 
language. It might be a turtle, and if so one wouldn't 
mind so much — if it were not a snapping- turtle. Yet 
I did not ask them more. Do we ever outgrow our 
fear of being laughed at! Besides, it was just one fur- 
ther beautiful thing to find out about in life. "Going 
on fifty" and something more to find out! 

101 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

Then the proximity of the rise of the curtain^only 
three hours off— again overwhelmed me. I hurried 
away on a 19 bus hunt, and it was in the bus at 5.15 
that I hissed, with finality, "This agony has got to 
stop." And it did beat its fierce wings against my 
heart less cruelly. 

The director came to my dressing-room, as he had 
no doubt gone to all the others before we were called 
to the stage. ''You are going to make the hit of your 
life," he mentally suggested. I smiled gratefully. 
And I smiled surely, for over my heart, underneath 
my gown, was pinned a talisman that was working 
like a two-dollar mental-science treatment. 

It was a silver shawl-pin that once upon a time 
Bonnie Prince Charlie had given to Flora Macdonald. 
The English family who had possessed it for many 
years were in the habit of sending it to various men 
and women of the theater to give them ''calm cour- 
age" through a premiere. David Garrick is said to 
have worn it, Mrs. Sarah Siddons, Beerbohm Tree, 
Forbes Robertson, our own Doris Keane in "Ro- 
mance," and, last, and surely least, it was offered me 
in remembrance of my appearance in London a decade 
ago. Think of being remembered for ten years! 
How could I have become disconcerted over a people 
who had still within them, among them, such charm- 
ing grace and kindliness? If the pin had been a hoodoo 
of centuries, I am sure the intent would have meta- 
morphosed the bad luck into good. 

I don't know how well I played last night. My 
comedy may have been tinged by the tragic lingerings 
of Mrs. Siddons, my tragic moments affected by the 
brilliancy of Garrick's humor, but, from the first 
summoning of the little call-boy with "Beginners, 

102 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

please, 'm," to the last lifting of the curtain when the 
company gathered about the English producer, as he 
addressed our ambassador and the audience, calm 
courage was mine. Merely suggestion? What do I 
care? I was not afraid. 

The English manager made a little round of the 
dressing-rooms after the play, climbing the many 
stairs to thank us singly. I have never known this 
before, and I am not sure whether or no it is the cus- 
tom over here, but it was delightful. Mrs. Wren en- 
deavored to believe that he came only to my room. 
It was not the truth, but she is already so much on 
my side that she would skim the milk intended for a 
baby and give me the cream. And once more I mar- 
veled at the generosity of these gentle souls in life 
who get their color, their joy of living purely vicari- 
ously. I think we should step aside to notice and love 
them more, and not take them for granted. We 
should make a fuss over them. So, quite suddenly, as 
she was fastening my boots, I stooped over and kissed 
her on her Jenny Wren hair. And Jenny Wren said, 
^' Thank you, madam." 

I made my way up a main street so dim from the 
imposed restriction of lights that, while I could tell 
some men from some women, I could not discriminate 
between a tall W. A. A. C. and a short soldier in 
''British warms," and all faces were white blanks in 
the darkness. Yet these sa.me girls, these W. A. A. 
C.'s, and V. A. D.'s, and W. R. A. F.'s, this initialed 
army of women who must go about alone at night, 
have made the dim highways safe for their sisters 
for all times. A 'premiere should end in a gay supper 
with intense devotion paid the artist. Instead, I 
passed along the streets of a cabless, Tube-striking 

8 103 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

city to a small, silent room and a glass of milk. But 
I felt as secure as though ''himself" was walking by 
my side, holding my hand, as we had walked ten 
years ago. 

The unloneliness of going about alone has come to 
stay. It is the gift of dead boys. This security for 
women is not worth one soldier's grave, yet the graves 
are as thick as furrows in a well- tilled field. And 
since this must be, I pray that every dead brother of 
a living girl may know that this new respect for women 
is part of the harvest of the Acre of God in which he 
lies. 



Chapter VIII 

At the Housekeeper's. 

MEMORANDA for the day: Fire-hght- 
ers, pohce, oil stove, Fuel Administration, 
Marcel wave, food rations, matinee. 

When a memorandum ends up with ''matinee" 
one might as well strike out all the other items except 
the Marcel wave and the police and go to the theater, 
for the day is done. And it came to me to-day as I 
hurried from police station to hair-dresser's that three 
matinees a week is going to interfere seriously with 
all other activities. There is no use telling myself I 
can accomplish anything ''between the shows." War- 
time hours still endure. They ring down late in the 
afternoon, and ring up early in the evening. The 
audiences must get home before midnight, when all 
transportation apparently ceases. The Tubes are 
again running, but, even so, I can't imagine how so 
many people can find sufficient vehicles to reach the 
night performance at approximately the same time. 

Dinner, of course, is no longer a meal to linger 
over. Almost any repast served in London in these 
days can be eaten in four minutes, but the effort 
of reaching a playhouse might be called a sustained 
one. Yet, with the marvelous adaptability of the 
English — a quality which we Americans are not in- 
clined to grant them — the fashionable theater-goer 

105 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

who once rustled in at nine now awaits the rise of the 
curtain at eight. 

To be sure, he takes his coffee during the interval 
(I like ''interval"; it is a better word than the French 
*'entr^acte," and more succinct than our awkward 
*' between the acts"), and sometimes coffee-cups 
clash unpleasantly. At to-day's matinee I could have 
walked to the rail of the proscenium-box and upset 
a tea-tray with enthusiasm, but the occupants went 
on taking their tea, though the second act was on 
and the serious moment of the play reached. 

I ran in to see an old friend the other day, and met 
there the wife of a peer who deplored with me this 
tea-drinking custom in the auditorium of a theater. 
The peeress sighed and said, in her pretty high voice, 
that queer folk now sat in the stalls who at one time 
knew nothing lower than the upper circle. Money 
had come without manners. "It was not so before 
the war," she assured me. I smiled at this. It 
sounded like our Southern boast of the early '80's: 
''Befo' the wah I nevah fastened my shoes." That 
was the great divide in the lives of so many of our 
own country-people, and again war empties the purse 
of one man to fill another's. 

I told the peeress that I had come out of this fight 
a poor woman rather than a rich one, and she an- 
swered that at least I was in good company. Over 
half of the income of the average aristocrat is taxed 
here, and one peer figures that he pays seventeen 
shillings out of every twenty. Unlike the Southern- 
ers, the British do not take pride in being poor — they 
do not exploit it. They accept the condition as an 
Englishman accepts most of the vagaries of the war. 

An American told me last night that, at the close of 

106 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

a great dinner-party, he found a lady of title, whose 
name decorates a famous old street, struggling into 
her overshoes, preparatory to walking home. She 
did not bother to explain that she once had several 
beautiful motors. Of course she had once had them, 
and of course she had given them up. The Southern 
woman and the Englishwoman made the same sacri- 
fices, but the British sister will never tell any one 
that before the war she never fastened her shoes. 

The only thing that surprised me in this word from 
the dining-out American was the lady's use of any- 
thing as sensible as overshoes. Now that I can go 
to the housekeeper's in the Tube, I meet the theater 
crowds from the other side the footlights, and these 
same ladies of title coming from just such dinner- 
parties. Their evening wraps are of gold brocade 
(grown rather stringy), their slippers are satin, their 
hair blows in the rush of air from the oncoming train, 
but they refuse to admit that they are not correctly 
equipped for a joiu-ney underground with the prole- 
tariat. In America, a woman of the same social 
stratum would stay at home if she could not travel 
comfortably, or she would resign herself to plain 
Subway clothes. But not this woman who has passed 
through four years of air raids and kept her hair 
dressed as her ancestors taught her. It may be 
"tiresome" to have her pale slippers stepped on, her 
flimsy wrap torn off her shoulders, but the centuries 
have told her what a lady should wear after six o'clock, 
and she is going to wear it. 

Now why am I going on about peeresses and fash- 
ionable life of the Tubes, when I should be reporting 
the exciting acquirement of a maisonnette? Yet I find 

that I must jerk along like this. All London is at 

107 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

present so rich in discoveries that I must comment 
on them as they come to mind, even though my tale 
will be a devious one, with very little sequence of 
thought. 

Or is not this inclination to fly off on conversational 
tangents the result of the London of to-day and its 
tangled skein of living? I find it impossible to con- 
centrate even on my own successes, and occasionally 
do talk of something else. This is a sure test of the 
abnormal condition of a player. The memoranda for 
the day show how diverse are the necessitous demands 
upon one. With an effort at method, I will now define 
maison7iette; first, the word in general usage; next, 
my own particular house. 

A maisonnette is a part of an establishment that the 
landlady doesn't want. So she rents it, furnished — 
generally furnished — for enough to pay her entire 
rental and have an ''egg to her tea" besides. What 
clever Englishwoman thought of the enticing word 
applied to a few rooms, with the use of the bath, will 
never be di\^lged. She is no doubt a cousin to the 
Araerican who gave the name of kitchenette to a 
dark closet containing a two-burner gas stove. These 
little *'ettes" of the English language are as the choco- 
late sauce on a fallen pudding, joss-sticks in a house 
with drains. 

Not but that I am delighted to have this resting- 
place. Mine offers particular attractions. It is in 
Chelsea, it has trees, the landlady is a lady (this from 
Beechey and Mrs. Wren — I don't care what she is), 
and it has the "geezer in the bath." When I was 
shown over my future domain I peeped timidly into 
the bath-tub, which is very, very deep and very, 
very narrow. The bath-room is the one which has 

108 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

the rear door opening into the garden. It was still 
open, letting in all outdoors as though it were August, 
but as geezers might, for all I knew, bathe as the 
Japanese did, my first glance was covert. However, 
there was no old gentleman or no turtle anywhere 
about, yet at this very moment the aristocratic 
landlady was telling me of the advantage of her 
own particular geezer. ''It is a very superior one." 
she said. 

I was about to scare the lady by blurting out 
vehemently, the way Americans do, my impatient 
ignorance of the topic, when my eyes followed hers, 
and her eyes were resting lovingly on a little copper 
boiler which rose above the faucets — excuse me — 
taps, and I moved closer to descry the lettering on 
the cylinder, and lo! it was a geyser. I suppose the 
word is universally mispronounced over here because 
they have not been brought up in a geyser country. 
They probably pin their faith to the man who invented 
the first copper cylinder for heating water, he himself 
having picked the fanciful name out of the dictionary 
as a novelist picks heroines from a telephone-book. 
More than this, it was the "Perfect Geyser," and it 
was all mine once a day for twopence extra, and ''you 
wouldn't burn much gas, would you?" Also no one 
was to turn it. on but me, also it must be kept polished, 
also I must leave the outer door open (but not nec- 
essarily while I bathed) so that the steam might not 
affect the ceiling. 

"But the room will be so cold!" I whined. 

"Ah! you wouldn't want it too hot, would you?" 

I am going to like this aristocratic landlady, but I 
am tempted to plague her into a real rage to see if 
she will continue to ask me courteous questions as 

109 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

she makes her retort. "You aren't well-bred, are you?" 
she will probably query. 

It is such nonsense for Americans to feel obliged 
to respond to this polite way of putting you in the 
wrong. The British avoid being in the wrong them- 
selves by asking your opinion on the subject. They 
defer to you. They don't expect you to answer, yet 
I wearily reply, and sometimes — not wearily — some- 
times I snap. ''But you don't want a paraffin lamp, 
do you?" a clerk asked me, when I had strayed by 
error into the electrical department of his shop. 

*' Yes, I do," I roared back, ''and I want a paraffin 
stove, too." 

"But you wouldn't burn a paraffin stove, would 
you?" still gently setting me right. 

"I will, if I can buy one," I answered, grimly. 

But I couldn't buy a new one in all London during 
this cold snap. Although no one approves of kerosene 
— ^paraffin, as it is called — the coal shortage has forced 
London into this convenient method of warming a 
room. It is American, and it is low, but the stoves 
have all been purchased, and in a certain yesterday 
morning's paper an advertisement can be found which 
runs: "Wanted: paraffin stove for heating, American 
make." 

I gave Beechey's address, after charging her that 
the wick must be round. "You know what a wick 
is?" I asked her, sternly. 

"Certainly. It is what smells and smokes. I will 
have them all lighted and buy the one that smells 
and smokes the least." She does not care for our 
stoves. She prefers a wet log, guarded by fine^antique 
dogs which prevent your getting near whatever flame 
there is. 

UQ 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

Beechey is to share some of the burden of setting 
me to rights, for she is to be of my household. This 
came about when I heard that the Enghsh woman with 
whom she had been staying was subletting, like 
every one else, and taking to the country. Beechey 
has a flat next to Sargent's house. When she first 
came to London she daringly took it, although it 
was beyond her means. And so she has never been 
able to live in it, just as she has never been able to 
meet Sargent. But she is his neighbor, or her flat 
is, and she goes to see all his pictures when they are 
hung, even though it takes her last shilling. 

Once something very thrilling happened. She had 
lost her bunch of pawn-tickets, which always travel 
with her, the packet growing thin or thick as the 
cottages in the Far West are with or without tenants. 
Her pride is fierce even in a pawnshop, so she gives 
the flat as her home on the tickets. And to that ad- 
dress these little stories of her life were sent; rather 
they were left at her tenant's door in an envelope, 
and some one said they had seen Sargent himself go 
into these flats with an envelope in his hand, prac- 
tically sneaked in and undoubtedly sneaked out again 
without it. 

I am sure if he was the one who returned them, and 

if he knew all about Beechey, and how much money 

it had cost her to be his neighbor, he would have 

put a bank-note in with the tickets that she might 

recover one bead bag, one tortoise-shell comb, one 

Dutch snuff-box, one cameo bob-earrings one — oh, 

well! — all of the things which she always pawns. But 

it would have done her no good. She would have 

framed the bank-note because Sargent had touched it. 

We have made a business arrangement. That is, 

111 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

she likes to call it by such a high-sounding name, 
but it is difficult to connect her with anything that 
has to do with dollars and cents. That my house- 
keeping will be concerned with pounds and pence 
makes Beechey all the more valuable, for she is to 
look after the bills, and the "general," in return for 
a place by my fireside and what the general cooks 
and serves. ''I do not find English money confusing," 
she said, with a good deal of airiness. I suppose it is 
simple enough with her. First, she has it in her purse, 
then she hasn't it. 

But she does not intend to do that with my money. 
She ran out of the dressing-room on the day I made the 
suggestion to her and came back with an account- 
book. The first entry was already in it. She had 
borrowed a pencil from the clerk at the stationer's 
in order to do this, and had absent-mindedly gone off 
with it. The entry was the cost of the account-book. 
Only she had put down the price of it in the penny 
column instead of the shilling. ''Account-book, Id." 

"Naturally, I am a little nervous," said she, when 
her attention was called to her loss of elevenpence. 
So she flew out again to buy an eraser, which she 
refused to put down in the book, as she could use it 
in the studio. She fixed up the price of the first entry 
as I looked over her shoulder. Again she had chosen 
the wrong column. It was now, "Account-book, 
£1." I foresee pleasing possibilities in our maison- 
keeping on which I had not counted. ' 

A shuffling of feet down the hall presages my dinner 
tray. Food does not always shuffle in, but the old 
man from the restaurant who brings dinner into the 
dressing-rooms on matinee days has not lifted his 
feet for forty years. He is not a clean old man and 

112 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

he covers up the food with green baize which is prob- 
ably his porter's apron. Still, it is a meal of sorts, 
Mrs. Wren managing to wangle any kind of meat out 
of them. To-night she has told me triumphantly 
that there is to be a sweet — a pudding made out of 
macaroni! Do I deserve all this? 

The rain is beating itself against my window, but 
with a hot-water bag at my feet, wrapped in the 
leading man's second-act dressing-gown — all unbe- 
knownst to the management who furnished it — I am 
comfortable. Whatever ''wangle" is, Beechey wangled 
it out of him — not me. Not that he can care for 
Beechey, nor she for him, as they are both careless 
people, and we must love our opposites. The cat, 
Peter, is sitting by the radiator effect, waiting to- 
see if it's liver or just a cut from the joint. There is 
so little, I am sure to want it all, but I cannot with- 
stand Peter's fixed stare. There are two kinds of 
beings in life: those who give, and those who get. 
Peter gets. . . . The old man has put down his tra}'', 
leaving chaos in mj^ heart. No, it was not his charm 
that did it. It is the post-card Falstaff had given him 
to carry up to me. On it Beechey has written: 

Lease signed. I forgot to say there is absolutely no way of 
getting back to Chelsea after the theater. But it will come 
out all right — it always does. 

Lovingly, Bee. 



Several days have passed, and I have not yet re- 
vealed anything but the bath-room in my maisonnette, 
although the original idea of this chapter was to 
dwell on such things. Even now I'm a little vague 

113 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

over my possessions. When a tenant has not yet 
departed and is sitting in the drawing-room which 
you are invited to inspect, you can't remember any- 
thing about the room except the tenant. She tells 
you to look around, but you cannot, and while you 
long to ask her for the defects of the establishment, 
the landlady is always with you and you can only 
remark falsely upon the excessive cleanliness of the 
place. You do not look for closet room or a chest 
of drawers, and you cannot remember after you have 
gone out if there is a desk. 

I know very well, however, that I have two rooms 
on the ground floor, the drawing-room in which we 
eat, at the front, and the bedroom back of it. Two 
flights up is Beechey's bedroom. In the basement 
there is a maid's room, grudgingly furnished, and a 
too large kitchen. There is a coal cellar all for me, 
and one for the landlady, which she keeps locked, 
and I have as well a "safe" in the scullery, which is 
a fly-screened box with a door that won't shut. The 
scullery is the outdoor space underneath the front 
stoop. I do not think any one will scull there, although 
the day I was inspecting one could have done it 
easily if he had a boat, as it had been raining. 

I have a slot-machine for the gas stove in the 
kitchen and an electric meter with a limit on it. Also 
the landlady has been to the Fuel Administration in 
Chelsea Town Hall, and I will be allowed a ton of 
coal — if I can get it. Beechey knows a lady who 
knows a lord who sells her logs from his estate. Or 
he may give them to her, but I wish to cast no re- 
flections upon the woman, although if he does give 
her logs she is in the same class with those who receive 
pearls. Beechey thinks she might get a log or two 

114 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

whenever she takes tea with her. Carrying timber 
through the streets does not seem extraordinary in 
this day, and it is not dangerous. While you might 
be robbed of a log, you can, on the other hand, use 
it as a weapon of defense if attacked. 

As one may see, I am on my mettle when it comes 
to the heating arrangements. Beechey is to have an 
electric heater in her bedroom and read by four candles 
to avoid using up my units and getting fined in con- 
sequence. And we will also burn quite a decent- 
looking paraffin lamp in the drawing-room. I will 
apply the ton of coal in the "front grate," and my 
bedroom will be heated by the warranted non-smelling 
second-hand oil stove. This stove costs five dollars 
in America when new, and over here eight dollars 
when old, showing the value of antiquity, even in 
sheet-iron. However, it has a handle, and it will go 
on little trips with me to meet the geezer. The gas 
stove is to be used in the kitchen, and as far as I can 
make out the maid in her basement room is to freeze 
to death or die of damp. 

There is a grate in this room, but when I suggested 
to my landlady that a fire should be kept there also 
she replied: "For the servant? But you couldn't 
do that, could you?" This equipment of the maid's 
room interests me, for its meagerness is the first light 
on a social condition that is about as unsocial as a 
church-lawn fete on a rainy evening. Besides the 
bed, there is a very decent camp-chair, a chest of 
drawers, a wash-bowl and pitcher — excuse me, jug — 
and two nails driven into the door for a wardrobe. 
The cold floor appears to be of some sort of composi- 
tion, and there is not even a scrap of the ugly stair 

carpet, such as maids generally have, to stand on 

115 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

for the morning's ablutions or for that icy moment 
when she wheels out of bed at dawn. And there is 
no mirror of any sort, although I am told that one is 
to be procured. 

I was able to look about this room, when on my 
tour of inspection, with some calm discernment, as 
the army officer's wife had found it impossible to 
get a servant who would occupy this chilly chamber, 
so I had it to myself. The strangest part about this 
room is the aristocrat who has equipped it. For she 
is a very good sort, with a heart overflowing with love 
for dogs. She has two Pomeranians — Powder and 
Puff — which show an inclination to resent my ac- 
cent. She is very gentle with them. "There, Powder; 
there. Puff; you wouldn't bite the lady, would you?" 
She has a maid of her own who comes in at 8.30, 
departing at noon, and who appears to work very 
hard for ten shillings a week, "and don't you touch 
the food." I have determined to do something nice 
for that maid when I come in. In that way she will 
like me, and I cannot live where I am not loved. I 
picture myself being loved by the retainers in my 
English home, and their working hard for me in 
consequence. 

My crowning satisfaction over the heating acquire- 
ments has been the discovery of a fire-lighter other 
than the Morning Telegraph. It is nothing more than 
our Cape Cod lighter, rather meanly made of per- 
forated tin-incasing asbestos, on a long toasting-fork 
handle. The ironmonger who sold this did not recom- 
mend the contraption. He said customers didn't fancy 
it. Beechey, too, had known a house to burn down, 
and a very good cook with it, from pouring paraffin 
out of a gallon jar on to a burning fire. I explained 

116 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

that I had bought a small fruit-jar with a top and the 
lighter should soak in that a moment before thrusting 
it beneath the coals and striking the match. She 
sighed and said, anyway, it was not beautiful. 

I wish that Sargent would paint a portrait with 
one of these inventions in the hand of his subject. It 
would make my house run with less opposition. Still, 
I have something to be thankful for: I have just read 
that Queen Mary, favoring a certain atomizer, at a 
recent bazaar, has caused a tremendous run on them. 
And I suppose I should be grateful that Her Majesty 
has not shown a predilection for oil stoves. 

To-day I went up to Chelsea for my ration-card, 
which is secured in a large empty room at the Chelsea 
branch of the Food Administration. After waiting 
for a while for my slip I was obliged to go away and 
fill it out somewhere else. The official said, as they 
did at the police station, that if I filled it out there 
the room would become too crowded. I can't imagine 
how I could so suddenly multiply while filling out a 
paper, but I did not put up an argument for fear I 
should be politely crushed by interrogations. How- 
ever, I did not crowd the stone steps outside the room, 
for that is where I sat, unknown to the officials, as 
I again wrote down my age and general condition, 
with a bottle of ink and a pen borrowed surrepti- 
tiously from a long empty table within, where I 
could just as well have been. 

In a surprisingly short time — to the officials — I 

returned with the papers, and as I waited for my book 

I gloomily read the printed evidence on the walls of 

the heavy fines levied upon abandoned creatures who 

had eaten too much margarine. It is an offense which 

I will endeavor not to commit. Indeed, as you take 

117 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

your turn at these various controls in London, any 
inclination to disobey oozes out of your system and 
a real awe possesses you, yes, and a respect for this 
machinery which has been set running by a people 
on a little island that the war might go on and on 
until they had won. My ration-book was a fairly 
fat one, although had I been an ''expectant mother" 
I could have had a great deal more. Expectant 
mothers, according to the notices at the Food Admin- 
istration, really have the best of it. Just a plain 
mother, a mother already, seems to receive no more 
consideration than the rest of us. 

From there I went to Beechey's barn of a studio, 
where she was painting a portrait of a Chow dog. 
The Chow dog had not ordered a portrait, but she 
was doing him as he was about the only kind of a 
model who enjoyed posing in the cold. He lay on the 
model-stand, far from the stove, sticking out his 
black tongue at me as I draped myself over the little 
structure holding a few coals. 

Although Beechey was very anxious to put more hair 
on the dog, I inveigled her out on a quest for some 
sort of a vehicle that would get me home from the 
theater at night. It was decided that a choice of 
three buses would take me down in the evening, as 
I would not then be traveling in the rush hour, but 
there would be no getting home at night unless I 
walked the distance from the South Kensington Tube, 
which was again showing an inclination to strike, 
leaving one between stations. 

Beechey said it would be no trouble at all to get a 
taxi from one of the many small garages in the neigh- 
borhood. She has an idea that anything can be done 

with money — mj'' money. She preferred that I would 

lis 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

get the cab from a man who occupies a building erected 
by Queen Anne. A tablet in the wall says so, and 
little Queen Anne boys and girls went to school there. 
It is hard to believe in boys and girls during the 
period of this monarch. One can think only of fur- 
niture going to school, bureaus and chests of drawers, 
and many-legged tables receiving an education on 
how to be elegant, piu-e, and austere. 

Of the many garages we visited, the proprietor of 
this one was the only man who would entertain driv- 
ing me home under any circumstances. He was 
ready to make a ''special" of it in a special motor 
which was not generally used. Beechey thought this 
was wonderful; I could hear her telling her friends 
I had my own car; but I drifted out of the estab- 
lishment after I had, upon request, seen the cab. It 
was very special indeed, as it was undoubtedly built 
at the time of Queen Anne, along with the bureaus, 
and, poor creature, didn't know it was like a lady and 
couldn't improve with age. 

The proprietor was resentful. It was evident I had 
not sufficient appreciation of a ''museum piece," and 
he said, offhand, that a growler would probably do 
me. A growler, according to my understanding of 
the word, would have done me very well, as I was tired. 
But the bars are not open till 6.30, and, even so, had 
I secured a growler and "rushed" it, that would not 
get me home from the theater every night — quite the 
reverse. Besides, it was very impertinent in the man, 
and I told him all these things, leaving him in a sort 
of daze. I blame the whole misunderstanding on 
Beechey, who didn't apprise me until we were two 
blocks away — excuse me, the second turning away — 
that a growler was a four-wheeled cab which enjoys 
9 119 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

staying out all night. ''That's that," as they say 
over here, and I let the matter drop — but I should 
really like to know how a receptacle for beer and a 
large cab with four wheels should have received the 
same sobriquet. 

Before I finished my cab-hunt I came to the con- 
clusion that it was used as a figure of speech in the 
case of the four-wheeler. Metonymy, isn't it? 
The container for the thing contained. For I was 
growling frightfully. ''Everything is so difficult," I 
exclaimed, grumpily. '< "The only comfort is that I 
have a home across the water to go back to." 

Beechey was silent for a moment. "Yes," she 
finally replied, "but I am thinking of the millions and 
millions who've been up against these difficulties for 
almost five years, and who can't run anywhere, for 
they're at home right here." 

Then I was very ashamed for finding life difficult 
because I couldn't find a growler, and was, as a reward, 
put on the track of one by a woman who came up 
from a black cellar with a sign of "Mangling" in the 
window, where she was living with her children. Her 
husband was a carter, but they went in good society, 
for they had a friend who was a "fly proprietor." 
You may take this any way you please. If he was 
indeed "fly," he would probably get the better of me 
in the bargain, but I didn't care. I was at that 
weary-legged stage when I would ride home in a 
growler or a fly at any price named. Only, in these 
days of one hundred miles an hour through the air, 
it amuses one a little to think of the dead-and-gone 
man who first called a clumsy, crawling, earthbound 
vehicle a fly. 

And I must step aside — again — to speak of this 

120 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

woman who came out of the cellar, for she was beau- 
tiful, she was radiantly beautiful and young, with 
signs of toil as yet only in her poor cracked hands. 
And I thought how wonderful she was to go on living 
in a cellar when she possessed so marketable a com- 
modity as loveliness. Yes, and knew it. Eve and 
all her daughters intuitively know that beauty can 
bring a price. It is easy enough for us plain ones to 
be good, but the real Spartan is the underfed, over- 
worked woman who continues a drudge although in 
these days of strong excitements one little promenade 
down the Strand would bring her in more than she 
could make by mangling in a score of years. 

Beechey had stopped to speak to her, and when 
she caught up with me I myself ran back. The woman 
was still in the doorway, a baby at her bosom. ''I 
just want to tell you," I stammered, "that you've 
been very kind, and that — that you are very 
beautiful." 

The woman smiled even more broadly. "The lidy 
with you, she said that just naow, but she put it dif- 
ferent, ma'am." 

"She did." 

"She said, 'With yer nipper in yer arms, yer 
beautiful. Always keep the baby in yer arms.' " 

Wise Miss Beechey! 

It was after an arrangement with the proprietor, 
who was only fairly fly, was completed that I began 
once more to enjoy Chelsea, and to feel that I would 
soon become a partner in its homeyness. Surely 
every visitor in time appreciates the sense of littleness 
that London manages to convey even though it is the 
most vast of cities. Each little town — Mayfair, 
Kensington, Bloomsbury, Chelsea, et al, which go. 

121 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

together to form the municipaUty — still preserves its 
separate entity. Individual interests are preserved. 
In the shop-windows may be posted a reward for the 
loss of a pm'se in that district, or a little missing dog 
is described in the handwriting of his master. Or 
other placards in a feminine hand beseech the school- 
children to look out for a cat answering to the name 
of ''Susy." As though any cat answered to any name! 
Or there is to be a dance at the Chelsea Town Hall. 
An old illumination points a finger in the direction 
of an air-raid shelter. Dreadful rules are painted 
on park boards as to the behavior of perambulators. 
A grocer notifies us that the lid is off "Marge," using 
an English expression, of course, equivalent to "lid." 
All of it is somehow extremely simple and personal, 
and one can understand how lonesome a Londoner 
might be when meeting with the sweeping generalities 
of New York City. 

I walked happily with Beechey toward the King's 
Road. "Now everything is arranged for, except the 
dish-cloths, and we'll move in." The bus was ap- 
proaching and I held it firmly with my eye. "Oh yes, 
I forgot. Of course, there's the servant." I put my 
foot on the bus, subduing it. 

I could hear Beechey above the snarling of the 
creature echoing my words, "Of course, there is the 
servant." But she was giving my casual exclamation 
a certain tragic reading, as though it were a casualty. 

1 called back to her, as the bus endeavored to 
shake me off the platform, "But I'll get one to- 
morrow." I couldn't hear her after that — not plainly 
— owing to 19 bus grinding its gears at me; but as I 
set this down I am struck with the thought that in 

almost every chapter somebody laughs at me. 

122 



Chapter IX 

At a Woman's Club. 

IT IS summer! And I should begin this paragraph 
with a verse of poetry, as the Enghsh papers 
start off their news items, for I am glad it is 
summer, and am glad I am at this club in charming 
Mayfair. If I step out on my iron balcony I can see 
the green of Hyde Park. If I make one turning from 
off my street I am in as delightful a jumble of old 
furniture-shops, and flower-stalls, and vegetable- 
markets, and duchesses' palaces as one could find in 
the heart of Rome. 

The upper chambermaid, who does the rooms on 
the lower floors, potters in and out, and does not dis- 
turb me, as I write, with news of the ill behavior of 
Jerusalem artichokes, shooting their green sprouts 
recklessly about, or the indecency of the ''geyser 
wot hisses" at her. Beechey does not enter my 
room at the moment of evolving a sentence containing 
almost an idea, and burst into tears because she for- 
got to clean her brushes. I am an old, old woman, 
broken by three months' housekeeping in Chelsea — 
three months of generous effort to give to an unap- 
preciative world a solution of the servant problem. 
I am old and alone, and I am glad I am alone and 
almost glad I am old. When 1 am sure I am glad I am 
old I can write Finis to this book. For I know that 
one must not only accept, but be happy in being old, 

123 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

if she is entirely normal, just as youth takes pride 
in its slender stock of years. 

You may read into this hiatus, this gulf of silence 
from spring to summer, doings both grim and gay. 
Certainly I did not know that the last chapter was 
to be the end of my diary, and I fear my editors did 
not. Nor were they encouraged by my cables ex- 
plaining the cessation of literary effort. In March I 
regretted delay, changing cooks. In April regretted 
delay, ten performances weekly. In May regretted 
delay, spring is here. That they did not reply with 
the regret I ever existed shows that a publisher thinks 
twice before he cables once. Upon thinking twice he 
probably considered himself well rid of these defective 
side-lights on English living. 

I don't see how a woman keeps a diary, anyway. 
If she has time to write it, she hasn't time to have 
anything happen to her worth writing about. More 
than that, one needs perspective. It's all very well 
to keep a line a day. That prevents an inconstant 
reader sending a publisher word that the King's 
garden-party was on the 11th, not on the 12th, and 
the men's favors were not rosettes, but ribbon bows 
with one end longer than the other. And when one 
has time to look back and reflect one finds that the 
important event of Monday morning has no sig- 
nificance by Saturday night. The man who lives up to 
''Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to- 
day" may have spent a large part of his time accom- 
plishing the unessential. 

Then one makes statements which, if one could get 
the manuscript back, would be changed. I wish I 
had not said so much about not going to London to 
escape the plaints of lovers, nor assumed that a do- 

124 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

mestic complication had not a young man behind it. 
I confess a vacillation of mind. I am a bit like Hugh 
Walpole, who told us all about Russia in The Dark 
Forest, and in a preface to his second Russian book, 
The Secret City, informed us that anything he said in 
The Dark Forest was wrong. 

I look over the uncorrected carbon copy I have 
kept for myself of the preceding eight chapters, and 
observe that I was about to get a servant, and was 
cheerful over it. Why did I not slip in something 
about a shudder going through my frame as I uttered 
those words? — suggest that I was sensible of an im- 
pending doom? I remember perfectly the breakfast 
that morning, before I started out for a maid, and my 
utter unconcern over a report in my paper to the 
effect that the ladies of a neighboring town had de- 
cided at a convention to call their servants, in the 
future. Miss or Mrs., according to their estate in 
life. I did not muse upon the motive — whether fear 
or fondness — that caused these ladies to adopt a super- 
respectful attitude toward their domestics, after cen- 
turies of indifference to anything but the work they 
got out of them. I had that eternal hope of a ''gem" 
which accompanies a woman as far as the desk of an 
Intelligence Bureau. I still believed that 1 should 
call my general by her last name, as she would call 
me "modom." 

Mrs. Wren had picked out my intelligence bureau 
the night before, calling it a registry office. She had 
put on her bonnet and run to a theater across the way 
to ask advice of a dancer who, like most dancers, 
was a sedate householder w4th an eye to the purse- 
strings. The dancer sent her compliments, said nice 
things about a book I once wrote of English life (I 

125 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

trust she will never see this one), and wrote down an 
address and the number of the bus which would lead 
me to it, all of which I promptly lost. However, 1 
remembered the bus number, and I thought if I gave 
the conductor sixpence, he, or she, might look out 
for me. 

It was a he, an observing man to the point of 
clairvoyance. I got no farther than, *'I want to go 
along the Fulham Road till I find — " when he com- 
pleted my phrase with, "Mrs. , the registry, 481." 

He was a man wasted on a bus ; he should be sitting 
behind a crystal ball, telling about a dark rival and 
a journey. ** How did you know I wanted to go there?" 
I asked him. 

"It's the face that does it, anxious-like. I picks 
'em out. All the lidies 'as it." 

For the first time that day I felt the chill of the rain! 
You know — suddenly your skirts are wet? And I 
moved down toward the door, sa as to get out ahead 
of another very anxious-looking lady who might, by 
a few inches' advantage, secure my treasure. I had 
a vision of calling out, as she would patter, 
breathless, behind me, from the bus to the registry 
door, "I'm first; I'm first," as one claims sanctuary. 

The lady got down when I did, and she entered the 
office some two paces behind me, but she secured the 
only female in the many rooms, in the United King- 
dom, I should say, who was in need of work. There 
were preliminaries. I paid a half-crown for the honor 
of filling out a blank v/hich committed me to paying 
twenty shillings on securing a servant, but as I did 
not have to return to the housekeeper's, five miles 
away, to make out the papers, it was worth the money. 
A registry office is the only place you can write down 

120 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

your full name without going at least as far as the 
gutter to do it. 

My adversary had the advantage of me, as she 
was known to the large blond attendant who was 
trying hard to put it all over me with her accent. 
Or perhaps only Americans are asked to pay half- 
crowns. Still, I was glad to do it, for the single do- 
mestic in the room was looking on, and when she saw 
with what good grace I relinquished a half-crown she 
would, naturally, prefer to be in my generous employ. 

Yet she did not prefer it! She muttered something 
to the blond lady manager, who made signs which 
resulted in my adversary and the girl going off into 
a remote cubicle, probably to poke fun at me. I 
looked inquiring. "Phyllis" (and her name was Phyl- 
lis!) "doesn't care to go to an American, madam," 
explained the manageress, attaching to this state- 
ment no air of surprise, but as one might say, "Phyllis 
would prefer not to enter the household of boa- 
constrictors." 

"Why not?" I immediately asked. * 

The attendant shrugged her shoulders — a poor 
shrug, copied from visiting Belgians. "They prefer 
English ways. Anything new fusses them, doesn't 
it, madam?" 

I thought of that bedroom in my maisonnette, without 
a mirror, and a bare floor, with two nails for the ward- 
robe, and then of the sort of room a mistress of the 
same position in life would offer — would be obliged 
to offer — a maid at home, and I wondered if it would 
really fuss them if they had what comforts their 
ugly lives surely entitle them to. Or must we teach 
them even to accept comforts? 

I didn't appreciate it then, but this interrogatory 

m 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

statement of the clerk is one of the stumbling-blocks 
to the future happiness of the English servant. She is 
no longer content. She has reached that milestone — 
has achieved it. But she has weary years of tradition 
to overcome before she can accept the new order of 
things with any degree of satisfaction. *'It fusses 
her." The British lower class doesn't like to be 
fussed. It exercises new muscles in the brain, and this 
is fatiguing. It is easier to go along — growling, but 
accepting. 

I say hastily, now, before my British friends arm 
themselves with pen and paper, that they are not 
unkind mistresses. They are very kind. I have 
never heard an English voice rate a servant as I have 
heard an American voice do. The mistresses are civil, 
but the civility, to my American mind, is only voice- 
deep. The old feudal system obligated a certain 
decent attitude toward the serf, but it is an attitude 
of manner, not of concern. Yet, so far, the British 
servant prefers it. 

I expressed some surprise to the blonde over the 
emptiness of her rooms. I felt that my half-crown 
entitled me to freedom of speech, and she informed me 
she would send out post-cards so that I might have 
an array from which to pick the following noon. 
She had a card-filing index of a thousand names or 
so, and began shooting the drawers back and forth 
so recklessly displaying applicants that I besought her 
not to bring together too many at one time, as they 
would prove an embarrassment of riches. 

She intimated that she would try hard not to. 
She thought she could get me something very smart 
for thirty shillings. I replied that I wanted some- 
thing very smart for twenty. I had learned from the 

128 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

dancer that the average general who has her bed 
and board receives fifteen shilHngs a week, but I 
don't think that fifteen is enough for a woman, for 
any kind of a woman, even a general. One would 
think that a general should receive more money than 
servants whose talents are limited to maldngbeds 
or dusting parlor furniture — if rank counts for any- 
thing — but this is the case only among the military. 
The poor creature who cooks and serves, lays fires 
and climbs stairs, has small recognition in civil life. 
The harder she works the less she gets, and I suppose 
by this inverse ratio, if she did the washing and took 
care of the garden, she would receive no money at all. 

Beechey called at the theater that night to report 
that she had the dish-cloths and had bought stores 
from the Stores. She had purchased several kinds 
of Indian meal, as she had cut out some recipes from 
a certain paper so as to give variety to the menus. I 
spoke from out the experience of eighteen years' 
housekeeping, ''Cooks find difficulty with newspaper 
recipes." 

"Not with these," she retiuned, calmly. "The 
printing is so clear." 

When I told her that an army of smart generals 
would be awaiting my selection the following noon, 
she grew restless, squinting at my figure as though 
she were painting it, and finally advanced the theory 
that she should do the choosing. "I will be brought 
in contact with her more than you, since I am to 
look after the housekeeping," she explained, "and. it 
will be important to have some one with whom I 
am spiritually sympathetic." 

I granted this for two reasons. One, that she 
wanted it, and another that I had to seek some 

129 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

method of getting my two modest trunks and odd 
bits of baggage from the housekeeper's to the maison- 
nette the following day. My friend the American 
Express Company (I speak of it often, as I own four 
shares of stock in the concern) could not promise to 
call at a certain hour, and, as it was a matinee day — 
as usual — the fiat would be closed after twelve. 
This news is not worthy of a paragraph, except to 
accentuate again the amount of time and trouble 
which must be expended upon the simplest details 
of living. It ended, I may add, in my paying a van 
proprietor four dollars for moving my slight impedi- 
menta. He said it couldn't possibly be done for less 
than three-fifty, and when he was sure I was an 
American he said it would be a great strain on his 
'orse, and ''upped" me two shillings. However, he 
descended the baggage without assistance, which was 
a relief, as the housekeeper and I had spent three 
days worrying over who would take the trunks down 
the stairs, since the bootblack on the corner had the 
"flu." This may not appear clear, but it fakly out- 
lines London's business processes at the tune. 

And the next day Beechey reported that she had 
engaged a cook. Upon sifting down the story of her 
glorious encounter with the regiment, she had en- 
gaged the cook. Two had presented themselves at the 
agency, one who was willing to come every day, and 
one who would come only tlu-ee days out of the week. 
The blonde made every effort to secure the job for 
the cook who cooked but occasionally. 

"But we eat on the other days, too," Beechey told 
her, "and we want fires in the grate kept going all 
the time." 

The blond Belgian shrugged again, and Beechey 

130 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

went off into a cubicle with the girl who was willing 
to stay all the time. I don't know what Beechey 
asked her in the inquisitorial chamber. She should 
have begun with references, then to soup, and so 
on through the table d'hote, but she probably told her, 
as I know I would, that it was a very nice place, with 
almost no work to do and every evening out. 

My friend admitted that she had engaged her before 
asking for her character. In fact, she never thought 
of it at all, as her artistic associates have but few 
characters among them, and she returned to the 
blonde, when the maid said she would come for six- 
teen shillings a week, to whisper to her that she 
thought that was too Uttle. The manageress had 
stared, and when she was sure she had heard aright 
advised Beechey to kee pthe raise for a little encourage- 
ment when the range broke down or the sewer 

backed up. < i. on t 

"Then what did you really learn about her. '' i 

ventured to inquire. ^^ 

''I learned that she would sm-ely come, and —a 

pause here— "I learned her name." 
"What is her name?" 
Stackpole passed through my mmd, Mortlake, 

Sutton— good English last names sounding well before 

"Her name," said Beechey, in a xow tone, "her 
name is Gladys." 

"No, no!" I cried. . 

"Yes, it is. But she has a beautiful complexion, 
And, more than that, she is a soldier's daughter. 
Her 'father is still in France." 

"Oh well, why didn't you say that in the hrst 
place?" I exclaimed, completely won over. 

^ 131 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

"I kept the best till the last," said Beechey, her 
face shining. 

The next night I was to move in, and the morning 
after that, at 8.30, Gladys was to be received by 
Beechey and introduced into the mysteries of making 
coffee, which my friend contended was best accom- 
plished in a saucepan. All this time I was to be asleep, 
scarcely awaking as Gladys would creep noiselessly 
in and start the fire in the drawing-room. Not until the 
brealvfast tray was brought to my bedside by Gladys, 
with "Good morning, madam," would I luxuriously 
arouse myself. 

My trunks departed identically with the sixteen 
shillings; the rest of the day was spent in the theater, 
and at eleven o' night the fireman who was on duty 
after nine announced that "Mrs. 'He's brougham is 
waiting." That was very satisfactory to Mrs. Wren, 
and she called so much attention to my departure 
that the members of the company stuck their heads 
out of their dressing-room doors and wished they had 
some rice to throw on me. 

I didn't look as though I should have rice, or should 
have a brougham. All day Beechey had been "tele- 
phoning through" to ask if I could manage to secure 
matches, coffee, hand-towels, eggs, bread, some 
"cheerful" flowers, and kindling. The stores had 
not come from the Stores, and the shops were closed 
Thursday afternoon in Chelsea. Mrs. Wren very 
wonderfully procured all of these commodities, add- 
ing a quartern of gin and a piece of cheese as her 
contribution to the new house. I went out looking 
like a war-time Santa Glaus, and with ever so big a 
fear in my heart that the brougham would not let 
me in it. When I saw it was just a homely old growler, 

133 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

with a homely old man driving a horse not proud, 
nor yet too skinny nor exhausted-looking, I felt re- 
lieved. And when the cabby told me that the beast 
was a war-horse and had just been brought from 
France, the exaggerated sum I was paying for driving 
home every night ceased to be an item for vexation. 
It was nothing more nor less than a horse pension. 

I leaned forward in my hard little four-wheeler, 
as we drove up Pall Mall, and looked through the 
window-glass, blurred with rain. I let down the win- 
dow at the left, just as we were passing Marlborough 
House. Ten years ago, as I drove home over this 
route, securing one of those new and dangerous taxis 
if possible, the sentry who stood without the gates 
was a brilliant target in red. Twenty years ago, 
during the Boer War, he wore the same gay uniform. 
Now, as I took this familiar drive homeward, I found 
a sober creature doing his sentry-go in dull yellow. 
As we turned into the Mall at St. James's Palace, the 
silver bell of the clock was striking the quarter, and 
smartly around the corner marched the guard, on 
what I presumed to be a tour of inspection, for I 
met the little company many nights after that, going 
in and out among the royal palaces. First, an N. 
C, and directly behind him the officer of the day, 
wearing the sword which we seldom see now, with 
three privates behind him, the last one carrying the 
lantern of Diogenes. All of them going through a 
formula established by that faint, far arbiter of Eng- 
lish fashion — Precedent. 

There was still traffic in the Mall. Huge army 
trucks were taking our route, winding behind Buck- 
ingham Palace and halting before a great, thoroughly 
lighted soldiers' hostel that was, and will be again, a 

133 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

splendid hotel when the overseas men have all gone 
back. These trucks seem to have no homes of their 
own. I always fomid lines of them standing through 
the wet nights, the proud possessors enjoying the 
cheer inside, as once long lines of limousines waited 
before the doors for their masters. Only, in this day, 
it is the chauffeurs who are inside. 

Beyond, in Eaton Square, rows of low, beautifully 
built huts fill the space that was once greensward, and 
clearly worded directions for the benefit of the soldiers 
strange to the city are upon illuminated signs at every 
corner. The homes of the aristocrats look down upon 
these huts, but not with hauteur, for the impression 
that was strongest with me, even in my first early 
days here, was the easy merging of the old landscape 
with the new, as the aristocratic sections extend their 
welcome to the humbler abodes for the soldiers. I 
believe that in a country which has never known the 
traditions of feudalism this gathering of the humble 
around the seats of thepowerf ul would be not so 
naturally accepted. That is one for feudalism, and 
occasionally the war correspondent passes through 
who reads another brief for it in the contrasting of the 
care of the English officers for their men as compared 
to the unintentional indifference of our own officers 
toward their comrades in the ranks. 

At Sloane Square I thrust my head far out of the 
window, as I thought the crowd collected could not 
be there save for a fire or a fight. But I had forgotten 
the lure of the Owl lunch- wagon. The little red- 
windowed van was a white bark in a khaki sea, and 
I wondered where all those boys were to sleep, if they 
could sleep at all after several mugs of coffee. I 
could not see if they were eating doughnuts, although 

134 



AN AMERICANOS LONDON 

I tried hard to, for Mrs. Wren had told me some- 
thing that afternoon very lovely about the homely 
fried cakes, and although it will keep me from my 
Chelsea domain by a paragraph or two, I must fly 
off at the usual uncontrolled mental angle and 
repeat it. 

Mrs. Wren has a friend who started one of these 
Owl wagons at the beginning of the war, with a capital 
of twenty pounds. Now he would not sell his business 
for several hundred— for he is rich — like madam. I 
am not trying to induce you to invest your money 
in coffee-stalls; the point is that his specialty of late 
has been doughnuts, and her point is that there is 
work for all, if the Britisher will only be adaptable. 

Mrs. Wren's friend, Mr. Coffee-Stall, told her that 
a girl came to him one day with a plate of doughnuts, 
to ask if he would taste them, but he had no chance 
to taste them, for some colonials seized the plate, 
crying, "Good old Salvation Army!" In a minute 
there were only coppers to show for the samples. So 
Mr. Coffee-Stall went to the girl's house, and found 
there her father, who had been in the war, and left 
with a nervous affection of the legs which prevented 
his going back to his old job of house-painting — or 
whatever it was that took legs. Then his wife went 
out charring, and the girl stayed home with the father, 
who tried to help with the cookery. He worked on 
doughnuts day and night, for he had eaten those that 
the Salvation Army distributed at the front; and on 
the day he had perfectly golden-browned them, as he 
sat on a high stool by the range, she took them over 
to the Owl lunch- wagon. 

"You know the rest, in the books you have read" — 
which I should not continue, as I believe it runs: 

10 135 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

''how the British regulars fired — and fled." But, of 
course, mother, father, and daughter turn out hun- 
dreds of doughnuts a day, and wheel father every 
night to the movies. All of which must be very satis- 
factory to the possible male reader, as it proves that 
a man can cook, if he will. 

As I had this little resume of doughnuts, Gladys 
reverted to my mind, and the home I was coming to, 
after a long absence from any but borrowed homes, and 
I determined we would have doughnuts all the time, 
made only as a soldier's loving daughter would make 
them. Then we rather suddenly turned into my little 
square, to stop at my little house, and between the 
drawn curtains I could catch the flicker of my fire, 
and once beyond the door I could smell the oil stove 
''welcoming me in"; but the rooms were steaming 
warm! Beechey went down into the kitchen, and 1 
heard her say, "Miaow! Miaow!" which made 
me fear for her reason; but she said she was only 
scaring off the mice. It was not a wasted effort, as 
one was found the next morning, stark and cold, 
probably having laughed himself to death. Pretty 
soon she returned with some cocoa, which was very- 
thin, as she had followed the directions on the tin. 

And soon after that — after she had asked me how 
the play had got on, and did the audience like the 
leading man — the gas stove was out, the grate fire 
softly glowing, and I lay on an excellent bed, looking 
at the bare branches of the great trees, which a pale, 
wet moon was permitting me to enjoy. Cora's moon, 
making her unhappy, no doubt, but illuminating nat- 
ure for me, which is a very decent use for this torch 
of love, when one is "going on fifty." 




Chapter X 

OOM! And yet not a boom. Bang! And yet 
not a bang. Iron upon iron, but with no 
metaHic reverberation, the echo only in my 
frightened brain as I sat up in bed in the gray of the 
morning hght and tried to define the assault. Again 
it came, and I knew it to be a knock on the knocker 
of the front door. I don't know how the door felt 
about it, but it had the effect upon me of a blow; 
to define the two, a knock-out blow directed at me. 

I appreciate now that I should have received the 
knock-out blow as would a pugilist. I should have 
fallen straight back upon my pillows and lapsed into 
unconsciousness. In that fashion I would have dem- 
onstrated that I was in no way concerned with 
the front door and the knocks thereon. That the 
front door led to the maisonnette, but was not the 
maisonnette, and that it was the duty of the land- 
lady, snug and warm with her Pomeranians in the 
room directly above me. either to answer knocks or 
to discourage thein. 

But I can never resist an appeal at a front door. I 
suppose I was a lackey in some earlier period, for I 
hastily threw a dressing-gown about me, went to the 
door and received from the postman a parcel of ob- 
viously dying flowers addressed to the lady sleeping 
above. I put the parcel down on the antique wedding- 
chest in the hall, and flew back, dressing-gown and 

137 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

all, to my cooling bed. I shut my eyes. I put a 
stocking over them. ''You are asleep," I said. 

''Blump!" cried a woman's voice down the street. 
''Blmnp!" It came nearer. There was a sudden 
barking. At first it seemed to be the Pomeranians, 
but, on analysis, it was one large bark rather than 
two small ones. It was the dog next door protesting 
at ''Blump." Soon the noise came to our door, ac- 
companied by a knock, a different kind of a knock, 
but just as imperative as the postman's, and, throwing 
a fur coat over the dressing-gown, I again answered 
it. There was no one at the door. Nothing but one 
quart of milk looking up at me boldly (whoever said, 
"as mild as milk"?), with the milk-girl going her 
wretched way down the street. Once we had milk- 
maids in the country and milkmen in the city. Now 
men look after the cows and girls peddle their com- 
modity; but no matter the sex, the London street- 
cry of ''Blump" continues, horridly corrupted from 
''Milk below," to add to the horrors of rising. Do 
you remember in the dead and gone days Trilby and 
her "Milk below," in the actress's best diction? 
What if Trilby had made her entrance on the stage 
with "Blump!" like a trained bullfrog! The play 
would have been a failure — as life at the maisonnette 
was going to be? I would not admit this. 

The milk joined the dead flowers on the chest, and 
the fur coat, the dressing-gown and myself reth-ed. We 
filled up the bed. ' ' You are asleep," I again told myself. 

"Bing!" at the door, followed by tat-tat, then a 

scuffling sound, as though rats were endeavoring to 

get through the keyhole. I put the eider-down quilt 

over the fur coat over the dressing-gown, and went 

to the door, The paper-boy had gone on to exasperate 

J38 



AN AMERICANOS LONDON 

further the dog in the next house, and through the 
letter-drop had been shot the morning papers. All 
of us, including the papers, crowded back into my 
narrow bed. I put the stocking over my eyes. ''A 
maisonnette is that portion of a house rented by the 
householder in order that the tenant may answer 
the door," I chanted in the fond hope of putting my- 
self to sleep with the idea. 

The rage that this thought developed warmed only 
my head. My feet were freezing, I was too cold to 
get up and light the oil stove, and the only picture 
which soothed my mind, and finally sent me off in a 
doze, was that of Gladys. Gladys, who would soon 
be deftly laying the fire for me. How Gladys was to 
get in I did not know or care. I certainly was not 
going to let her in. That she did force an entrance, 
I learned later, was due to her arrival at the same 
time with the landlady's maid. But from that moment 
on until I first beheld Gladys kneeling at the grate 
my dozing dreams were perforated by staccato whis- 
pers in the hall and thousands of feet going up and 
down the basement steps. 

After the postman, the milk-girl, and the paper- 
boy made their first senseless attacks upon the door, 
the knocker was not in evidence until the usual busi- 
ness of life began. Fortunately, business in London 
is not actually humming and not largely knocking 
until ten o' the morning. 

I removed the stocking from my eyes, when I was 
sure Gladys was kneeling at the hearth, and elevated 
myself upon the pillows to greet her. I saw a young 
head, wearing an evening coiffure, bound low on the 
brow by a black velvet ribbon. She was singing 
*'Over There." 

139 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

''Is that you, Gladys?" I asked by way of greeting, 
just hoping it might not be. 

''Huh?" 

"Is this Gladys?" Faintly from me. 

"Ung-huh!" 

"Very well, then," I returned, firmly, sticking to 
my original formula, "Good morning, Gladys." 

She settled back on her haunches and looked at 
me, then she candidly gave to an icy world evidence 
of her first limitation: "I never could build a fire," 
confessed Gladys. 

Myself and wrappings retired under the coverlet 
for a space, again to emerge, and with a mighty sum- 
moning of early Indiana days I arose and showed 
my handmaiden how to lay the sticks. I also pro- 
duced the fire-lighter, soaked it in the paraffin, and 
applied a match. The charm worked. Gladys was 
yawning at it. 

"You need not watch it," I said, for I was proud 
of the thing. "You can bring up the breakfast." 

"Huh?" 

"Where did you come from?" 

"From Canada, and I wisht to God I was back 
there." 

"So do I." I was very fervent. 

She thought I liked Canada, and grew more sociable. 
"I am going to a dance," banging the coal-scuttle 
against the Queen Anne furniture. 

So far as I was concerned she could have left im- 
mediately, but fear of Beechey in the kitchen held me 
in bounds. "Get the breakfast first." 

"All rightee." She made her exit. 

After a while the coffee came up, Beechey just 
behind it, beaming at me. "She's splendid," whis- 

140 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

pered Beechey. Then I appreciated what I should 
have known before: that my friend will never see 
straight, and that she will never suffer greatly from 
the annoyances of life because of this. That quality 
is the real ''treasure of the humble." If a thing is 
hers it is all right. It is all right because it is hers, 
and Gladys was hers. 

We had a few days of horrible cooking and worse 
service before I returned to the registry to report 
on the lemon-grove for which I had paid a half-crown 
and a twenty-shilling fee besides. This was done by 
stealth, for Beechey implored me not to let the girl 
go until we were sure of some one to take her place. 
At least she could carry the coal, sweep and dust, 
after a fashion, and do up the dishes at night before 
going out to her evening dance. That is, she would 
do them up if Beechey kept her eye on her — I having 
departed to the theater — but she never went through 
a motion in the kitchen that could be avoided, al- 
though I suppose if a pedometer were strapped to her 
body one would learn that at least five miles of lost 
motions in jazz steps were recorded every night. 

Yet I do not regret the experience with this problem 
in economics which Great Britain has for the moment 
to deal with. For the first two years of the war the 
fighting colonials were allowed to bring their families 
over. So the father of Gladys, a man nearing fifty, 
and probably of not much use as a warrior, came 
across, and with him, or after him (in hot pursuit, 
I imagine) , came the useless mother and six children. 
Three of the children were so young they had to go 
to school; of the other three one went into the Land 
Army, and two into service, or such service as they 
could secure, for they had never been taught any- 

141 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

thing remotely relating to usefulness of any kind. 
I could not imagine from what stratum of life they 
came, until my landlady told me that Gladys told 
her she also was an actress. Then I knew that she 
belonged to that mean type who hang about the 
theaters in America in the capacity of supers. I have 
never known one who had an ounce of real worth in 
her make-up. 

That she and her sister ever went into service at all 
was because they were starved into it. The glorious 
color which had so impressed Beechey naturally would 
impress her, for it was paint. When once besought to 
rub it off, she did so — for the moment — and presented 
to us a hollow-eyed, gray-faced girl who, as she argued, 
would never get a job, much less hold it. She knew 
she was rotten — that was one of her charms — but her 
indifference to adopting methods that might make her 
of value rendered this charm evanescent. 

While she was exceptionally inadequate, she is one 
of the thousands of girls of the same estate in America. 
They are not brought up with the idea of going into 
service, therefore they learn nothing of housekeeping, 
and the net they prepare for the ensnaring of a hus- 
band is seldom stronger than a hair-net decorated 
with ribbon. It was with a deep, burning shame that 
I, who had come away to escape Cora's tales of love, 
should be dangling possibilities of a successful catch 
before the girl if she would learn from Beechey some- 
thing of cookery. To be sure, most of the dishes 
Beechey knew she prepared in a chafing-dish, but 
they could just as palatably and much more easily 
have been done on a range. ''I ain't a-goin' to cook 
forever," was our maid's hopeless reply. And while 
I might have responded that she was not a-goin' to 

142 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

cook for us as soon as we could better our condition, 
I did not presume to be saucy until the dream became 
a business. 

This looking forward to marriage and an immediate 
hired girl of her own is not the evil of England, but 
that of my country, where we are all ladies, or expect 
to be — therefore never cook. And it has little to do 
with this story beyond, as I have said, that there are 
hundreds of just such girls now in England, eating 
food and disseminating their ''just-as-good-as-you- 
and-a-little-bit-better " notions without any evidence 
that they are good for anything beyond a good time. 
These girls now want to go back; they are cold and 
underfed. As Gladys herself said, '^I'll cut my throat 
if I gotta stick it," but the steamer passage is now too 
high, and the British government does not appreciate 
that dipping into their treasury and sending them 
home might bring a greater return to the nation than 
the monetary expenditure would mean a loss. 

We kept Gladys on from day to day for several 
reasons. One was that we couldn't do better, another 
that her father was a soldier, another that Beechey's 
life was one continual triumph of hope over experi- 
ence, and the last that Gladys had turned her bed- 
room into a bower of beauty with a sad little view to 
remaining permanently. 

She undoubtedly liked her place, and we thought 
at times she might make an effort to earn the money 
I was expending upon her. But her efforts were ever 
limited to personal adornment, at its best at a dance, 
and sadly out of place in a kitchen. She did the entire 
embellishing of her own room. The piece of carpet 
to stand upon was never brought down from the land- 
lady's stores, and no bit of cracked mirror was ever 

143 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

supplied. I myself brought home a dressing-room 
mirror and took a useless rug from my bedroom to 
place at her wash-stand. But the landlady, who, 
if she had not been a lady, I would say snooped, 
brought it up-stairs again. And my curiosity was so 
great to see when she would really look after a ser- 
vant's comfort that I made no further effort toward 
exacting it from her. 

Yet, snooping myself one day, I found the room 
hung with pennants on which were lettered the names 
of Canadian towns Gladys might have passed through 
en auto, or might (mighter, in fact) have bought in 
a Toronto five-and-ten-cent store. There were bits 
of cretonne cushioning, picture post-cards of lovers, 
artificial flowers and cracked mugs, and a shell from 
Catalina Island. It made me sigh to step from that 
room, in which she took so much pride, into the filthy 
kitchen which also belonged to her. The kitchen had 
pretty blue-check curtains at the window. It had a 
high mantel-shelf, with old copper jars on it which 
would have shone with beauty if polished. The long 
dresser of dishes was attractive, and the whole would 
have presented a pleasant room to learn to be a good 
wife in if it had been looked upon as anything but a 
prison cell. 

One of our guests at one of Beechey's luncheons 

commented with aptness upon this discrimination of 

Gladys between beauty that had to do with her and 

that which pertained to hated service. Beechey burst 

into luncheons as soon as my trunks were unpacked 

and the sparse linen purchased. She sweetly wished 

to share her friends with me, and she had every reason 

to be proud of them. It is one of the charming traits 

of the English that, no matter how poor you are, if 

144 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

tliey like you they will come any distance, climb any 
number of stairs to see you, and they will invite you 
to their houses, no matter how shabby you are, to 
meet their very best-dressed acquaintances. If they 
smiled at Beechey they smiled indulgently, and never 
seemed to show the social exhaustion I felt at the 
close of a luncheon which was to have been served 
at one and came staggering up on a tray at two. 

Naturally, I would be the more exhausted, as it 
was ni}'^ maisonnette, and I had to struggle with the 
added responsibility of making conversation with 
strangers (while Beechey directed below-stairs) and 
trying to remember the hyphenated nam.es. It was 
of no assistance to me that I knew their husbands' 
names. I would have to know their father's name 
as well, or their mother's name, or some family name 
that they sought to keep green by placing it just before 
the last, or one of the last, of their husbands' names. 
And to this day I don't know whether I should address 
them by the last name or the whole combination, or, 
as they seem to (playfully), drop the last altogether 
and concentrate on the first in the arrangement. We 
Americans have one advantage — two, in truth — we 
can do anything wrong and not be thought any more 
dreadful than usual, and we can always commence a 
conversation with ''Say." As I grow older I stick 
more and more firmly to being an American, and I 
frequently say-ed these pleasant women. 

I remember it was one of them (she knew every- 
thing and everybody and was writing a book about 
those things she knew which could decently be put 
down in a book) who, with an author's eye, watched 
Gladys as she recklessly served the delayed luncheon. 
When it would seem that she had permanently witli- 

145 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

drawn the guest dared to comment upon the appear- 
ance of our general, or rather, to respond to my oAvn 
coup d'oeil and my whispered, ''Did you see her apron?" 

''Yes, and I saw her hair," the guest replied. 

Gladys, although provided with aprons by me, had 
on as filthy a one as I have^ever met. But her hair 
was coiffed, and the black-velvet ribbon lower than 
ever on her forehead. Cap? Well, rather not. 
Canada? 

"What intrigues me," continued the hyphenated 
lady who bore the name of her first and third hus- 
band, "is her vast interest in her hair and her indif- 
ference to the apron. She is wearing it. It is part 
of her." 

"It isn't part of her," spoke up another woman. 
"That's just it. It's part of Mrs. Closser-Hale " 
(they hjT^henate me over here — do it firmly; protest 
is useless), "and she doesn't take any interest in it 
at all." 

"But she would look smarter, I dare say she would 
be prettier if her apron was nicer," continued another 
one of these amazing people. Not that I discouraged 
their frankness. I was grateful for this impersonal 
view, their criticism in no way including me. I felt 
no responsibility for our servant. As the woman said 
of her husband, "Thank God we are no blood- 
relation." 

"It's a badge of servitude, an apron. They have 
that in their heads, and if they can discredit it they 
will do so. My maids won't step to the corner with 
their caps on any more." 

We talk of servants still in America, but long ago 
they stopped this in England — and now they have 
begun again. So, after all, it was not because it was 

146 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

low to talk of servants, but for the reason that it was 
not, really, part of the issue of living. But it is very 
much part of the present issue, and I find that the 
great ladies over here enjoy it as much as the Dorcas 
Society does in an Idaho village. I sat forward, for 
I wished to get into the talk again, if only as a member 
of the Dorcas Society. "Why won't they wear their 
caps?" I asked. 

"I wanted to know that, too. Bowen — that's my 
parlor-maid — said she would lose her chances." 

'^Chances for what?" 

''Chances to get married, of course. Possibly to 
the ironmonger's son near by, or some one who is in 
trade." 

My brain whirled. "Then this scarcity of servants 
can be traced back to mere sex," I shouted. 

"Mere sex!" laughed the lady wdth the names of 
two husbands and who was writing a book about them. 

They all looked at me, and there fell one of those 
embarrassing British pauses which I have learned are 
embarrassing only to the American. We fly into 
words to fill it, saying nothing, while they are just 
leisurely thinking things over. My words flew about 
wildly, but they were not as senseless as they appeared 
on the surface: 

"I didn't come over for this!" 

Then they all laughed, because when in doubt it 
is safe to show appreciation of what Americans say. 
The chances are we are trying to have our little joke. 

After they had left, I, falsely pretending I was going 
to take a walk that I might look at the tablets and 
the tombs, which always delights Beechey, flew up 
to the registry. The blonde was not at all glad to 
gee me, as she had my money and no more servants, 

147 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

but since those conditions endured I thought the 
least she could do was to talk to me. 

"Oh, they will go back into sendee," she said, 
crossly. She was always cross with me, after I had 
paid ni}^ fee, but then she had many Gladii to contend 
with throughout the day and I had only one. "But 
they won't as long as they can draw the out-of-work 
donation." 

"Out-of-work donation?" I echoed, respectfully. 

"Yes, madam," banging desk drawers full of names 
of cooks who wouldn't cook. "The government do- 
nation. Domestic servants went into munitions, 
motor-driving, into the Land Army, into all sorts 
of high-paying positions during the war. And with 
the money they bought gramophones and fur coats 
and lessons in jazzing, and when the war suddenly 
ended, the government, out of recognition of their 
services, arranged to pay these workers four-and- 
twenty shillings a week for fourteen weeks, or until 
they could find work at their old pursuits. The same 
thing held good for the men. You should see them on 
Fridays, drawing their money — silver queues, they 
are called." 

"Can't they find work?" 

"Most of them can, but they won't look for it 
until the donation ceases." 

"I thought they went into war- work for patriotic 
reasons," I said, bluntly. 

"Did they in the States?" 

"No," I admitted. "They took the job because 
the pay was higher." 

"So they did over here — don't let us deceive om- 
selves. The ladies of the upper classes worked for 
patriotic reasons, or for excitement, or to get away 

148 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

from their homes. But to thousands of our women 
it has been one huge hoUday. Gramophones and fur 
coats!" 

I could not respond to her impatience over the 
music-boxes and the warm wTaps. There was somic- 
thing pathetic to me in these first purchases made by 
girls who lived in carpetless basement rooms, with 
no music for them save from the pianos of their betters 
above, and never entirely warm when out in the raw 
air, until the war and its vast emoluments made fur 
coats possible. Many of them have no longer these 
treasures in their possession. In the north of England 
the pawnshops bear placards in the windows that 
no more fur coats will be accepted, and gramophones 
bring only a few shillings. 

Even as I now write they are returning, sour-faced, 
to do domestic service. Some depended upon the 
out-of-work employment donation as long as possible, 
making any excuse to avoid accepting a position, that 
they might continue their glorious playing. Some 
w^ork and also accept the dole of a too generous 
government staggering under sickening financial bur- 
dens, and these, when discovered, are fined or im- 
prisoned. The taxpayer howls through the columns 
of the press, ai^d when one workman was recorded 
as having driven up in a taxi — and kept it — while 
waiting for his non-emplojonent benefit, I myself, as 
a prospective sufferer from the income tax, drafted 
a letter. 

The sister of Gladys, who worked in the Land Army, 
was drawing an out-of-employment donation, and re- 
fusing to live at home or contribute to her mother's 
support so long as the twenty-four shillings weekly 

was paid her. Gladys herself said it was "fierce to 

149 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

take money one didn't earn, but that it was awful 
hard to go back to a kitchen," 

''But if it's a nice kitchen?" 

This was false in me, for I don't think any kitchen 
is really very nice, except to learn to be a good wife 
in. And this sympathizing with one side and then 
with the other is going to end in a very bad book, with 
no proper deductions drawn, and the reader left all 
up in the air — with me — and the rest of the world. 
Gladys forbore to comment on kitchens: "'Tain't 
that. You can't get in the right set if you're working 
private. When you're in a factory you go in a good 
set. An N. C. 0., even a private, won't look at a hired 
girl if he can get somebody working — say, in a candy- 
factory. I was in a chocolate-factory onct, and was 
in a dandy crowd." 

"Why didn't you stay in the factory?" I suddenly 
prodded. 

She evaded the question. Of course she had lost 
her job — incapable, as ever. So I continued: ''What 
difference does it make whether you're in a candy- 
shop or a kitchen? You're the same girl." 

Gladys was standing by the table, eating the crumbs 
on the cloth in lieu of brushing them up. "You're the 
same girl all right, but we 'ain't got no standing. 
Kitchen-work 's work in a kitchen, and a factory 
job is a business." 

She went out, catching her apron on the door- 
knob, uttering a "Damn!" and dropping my minute 
ration of butter on the floor. But I didn't care. She 
had hit it. Any work on top of earth is looked upon 
as a business except domestic service, and until that 
time comes when it will be a business, women of to- 
day, tortured by the wave of feminine unrest that has 

150 

/ 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

come sweeping over us, will avoid it. If we could 
make the woi^d over, and sponge from the brain all 
meaning of the word *' service" save its most beautiful 
significance, the intelligent girl who has a special 
aptitude for housework (and I still think this 
type predominant) will continue to strive for a 
place in some black factory by day to earn a 
blacker hole to sleep in by night. And she is 
unhappily right, for this poor striving is but her 
way of maintaining her self-respect. She will no 
longer be a serf. 

Good comes out of evil. This alarming refusal to 
return to domestic service now that the necessary 
curtailment of the personnel of English houses, great 
and small, has lessened, has caused the sober-minded 
men and women of Great Britain to treat with the 
domestic problem as thoughtfully as with the other 
huge labor conditions which have ever confronted 
them. Scared into it, as I have said, but, at any rate, 
really endeavoring to recognize menial work as a 
business. But the point is they do not call it a busi- 
ness. They still call it domestic service. 

Some committees have made no wiser concessions 
than the adoption of a handle to the names of their 
employees. Others, however, are arranging with them 
hours for work as definite as those in a factory. 
Hostels are being established that they may not 
''live in" if they do not want to; uniforms are taking 
the place of caps and aprons. Maids are sent in by 
the hour, at tenpence — twenty cents — an hour, and 
at Highgate a club has been opened which all of Eng- 
land is watching. I know the woman who started this 
club, and how she has planned it for years. It is 
amusing that she has accomplished at Highgate what 

11 151 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

I suggested at Kennebunkport, Maine, and was 
sneered at for my efforts. 

But all women of all countries must have discovered 
by now that, in the new order of things in this world, 
they must put others at ease if they mean to be at 
ease themselves. For I believe this rebellion would 
have come among domestics even had there been no 
world-embroilment, but the war brought to them — 
as well as deep grief and quickly forgotten losses — 
a period when they were just as good as anybody, 
and they are loath to return to a condition undeniably 
held in poor esteem by their fellow-creatures. 

And now I am covered with confusion, for the 
writing down of ''fellow-creatures" is a confession 
that this whole servant question is entirely in the 
hands of the masculine sex; it could be disposed of 
by the sturdy insistence of a man when he marries 
his wife that she must have domestic training as well 
as a pink bow in her hair. There are schools now for 
domestic science where a girl could learn her trade — 
her business — as she could never acquire it in the mean 
home of her father. Mrs. Whitelaw Reid has estab- 
lished one of these schools over here, and has found 
that the girl of the East End is just as willing to be 
clean and do things beautifully in a kitchen as to be 
a slattern and do them grubbily. But her chances 
for marriage are not so good to a man of decent 
estate when she smiles up from the kitchen area 
(in a cap worn for the very decent reason of keeping 
her hair out of the food) as when she lolls from her 
father's sagging window, unhappy and unkempt, in 
the Mile End Road. 

When there is a demand there will be a supply. 

And if men preferred a good housekeeper to a pink 

152 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

bow, they would get it. A girl would go into a kitchen 
(if for no finer reason than to practise on somebody- 
else's eggs with her new cookery recipes before she 
marries) if the man of the present day would let 
out a reef in his furled-up brain and admit that 
''labor, all labor is noble and holy." But he, too, feels 
the ignominy of personal service. The shadow of 
serfdom, faint though it may be, still renders the 
employee within a household a baser creature than 
the employee of a factory. 

Just at present, as I have outlined before, we are 
in the worst stage of all, for the English servant will 
not work for those who aren't kind to her, yet despises 
those whose sway is gentle. I wish a woman's brain 
could be entirely taken apart, like a watch, thoroughly 
cleaned, and the good little jewels of the works set 
to gleaming again. I wish I were wise enough to do 
it. But there! I can't clean a watch, much less a girl's 
brain. 

So far I have terribly muddled it. My landlady 
is out a very good maid for the present of four shillings 
from me. In my quaint desire to be loved, which I 
find expressed in the last chapter of my diary, 1 gave 
her this money, and as it was just one dollar more 
than she had calculated on to eke out her scanty 
existence she decided to dispose of the vexatious sum 
as soon as the nearest pub was open. It opened at 
twelve, and she fled — but to return. To return and 
create a mild scene by standing in front of my window 
and railing at me for "swanking about with my 
money." 

It was very "tiresome" to my landlady, who had 
found her a good servant up to the dollar spree, and 
it was very embarrassing to me, as I feared the girl 

153 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

had lost her place. If a maid drinks in America, out 
she goes, but my landlady had no thought of dis- 
missing her. The patient householder is accustomed 
to half-pint sprees, if not to two-quart ones, and we 
saw the maid no more because some other anxious 
housewife snatched her up, profiting, no doubt, by 
the enervation following the party. 

"It doesn't do to be too nice to them," said my 
landlady, which showed a great deal of restraint. 
''Now, about this mousetrap—" But I continued 
silently mutinous as she explained the vagaries of the 
mousetrap. It is the last clutch of the feudal system 
— this control by fear. The servant still vaguely 
recognizes it, even as she resents the sj^stem — it keeps 
what poor wits she exercises under the ordered sway 
which we all need to preserve our balance. But it 
clamps down the best of her, for the overlord of old 
was intent only upon the discipline that brought im- 
mediate results to him. Planning a future for his 
vassals was never one of the aims of the baron. 

As I say, to all intent I was confining my attention 
to the mousetrap furnished by the landlady. With 
the coming of Gladys we had grown even more popular 
with rodents in our neighborhood. Word went round 
among the mice that two Americans and a Canadian 
were living up the street, and that what the Americans 
didn't eat above-stairs the Canadian left on the floor 
below-stairs as she hurried out to her evening jazz. 
Properly speaking, it was not a mousetrap. But the 
landlady, with that curious attention to pennies and 
indifference to pounds which marks the aristocrat who 
goes into business, had it stored among her effects 
and thought it might be used. It was really a rat- 
trap, a very large one, and if a mouse once moved into 

154 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

it, the little creature could roam very comfortably 
through its long galleries for the rest of its life, and 
make itself a decent home. If bored, Mr. Mouse need 
not trouble to go out the main entrance, but could 
exit between the wires, which were wide enough to 
accommodate his little body at any point. 

Yet it was brought to us to catch mice in, and we 
were besought, if we did catch one, not to kill the 
little thing, but to carry the trap and all over to 
Battersea Park, a distance of about a mile, and let 
it out. She had tried it herself with a string bag, 
but, cmiously enough, there was no mouse upon her 
arrival. Yet this was the lady who would not furnish 
me with a scrap of carpet for my maid's room! 

Now who is to solve the servant question over here, 
when no one has begun to solve the mysteries of the 
mistress who engages the servant? 



Chapter XI 

OTHER engaging things happened besides the 
engaging of Gladys during the first weeks of 
our tenancy of the maisonnette. And a certain 
order came into our lives which gave time for pleas- 
anter pursuits than the eternal quest for matches or 
firewood. 

Having successfully grappled with the heating 
question, I grew ambitious for undisturbed mornings. 
It seemed that the milk-girl, the paper-boy, and the 
postman always had knocked on the door on their 
early-morning rounds, and, as far as I can make out, 
the tenant of the ground floor always answered the 
knocks. But I saw no reason why they always should 
because they always had, and before retiring each 
night I hung upon the knocker a neatl}^ lettered sign 
with ''Please" (we always say "please" over here) *'to 
ring only the area-bell until nine in the morning." 

It was an amazing procedure, and if I chanced to 
weaken early, anyway, I could hear the cessation of 
footsteps outside as the possessors of the feet stopped 
to read the card. But the scheme worked, although 
other knockers were more bitterly attacked to make 
up for this restraint, and the dog next door barked his 
usual protest. 

The dog must have slept in the lower hall, with the 

wall betAveen us, and I could not bring myself to com- 

156 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

plain of him for fear he would be consigned to the 
basement, where he would get rheumatism, along with 
the maid. He didn't have a very good time of it, 
anyway, that doggie. It got about, the way things 
do in this little village of London, that he was not fed 
as much as he should be, since dog-biscuits had gone 
up, and my landlady was often seen stretching her 
long, fine arm over the garden wall to drop him satis- 
fying bones. 

My landlady co-operated with me in my efforts 
toward a peaceful morning. She was pleasantly 
anxious that a stranger to her country should be com- 
fortable, even though the householder had to suffer 
placards on the door, and I think she would have pre- 
ferred amending the notice to, ''Please, an American 
begs you to ring only the area-bell. . . ." so as to have 
explained the unusualness of the act. 

She often came in the morning, after her setting-up 
exercises at the telephone consisting of vocal calis- 
thenics and a strain on the nerves which could be 
translated as an endurance test. The telephone was 
in the hall outside my door, and one would have 
thought it was a real gymnasium, with the landlady 
as instructor on the high rings, to judge by her 
pinched Oxford tones imploring some one to hold on. 

It was impossible not to hear these piercing one- 
sided conversations, although when her companion 
at the other end of the 'phone was evidently growing 
excited, she would remind her to speak low, as Mrs. 
Hale was sleeping. Yet in this way I learned many 
things of her goodness, of which she never spoke, for 
the English do not talk of their fine deeds. One was 
that she had been enormously active in gratuitous 
hospital work. And I liked her all the better for taking 

157 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

on the unromantic job — she had been the barber. 
She had a real concern and love for the Tommies — 
yet they must remain Tommies. She was reporting to 
some friend, one morning, of another friend who had 
decided to take as 'Spaying guests" a few officers still 
weak from wounds. ''Of course, only nice men," 
she told her over the 'phone; ''none of those counter- 
jumpers who went out as officers." It makes one 
wonder as to the ultimate fate of those little fellows 
who, in the exigencies of war, and their own ability, 
were made into what they call over here "a temporary 
gentleman." Although the Labor party is in, the Con- 
servative out, the last crust to be broken through will 
be that of caste in England, I imagine. But what a 
seething mass of flame will burst when this artificial 
covering is finally pierced! 

In our morning talks following the telephonic period 
my landlady always left the hall door wide open, and 
as the one leading into the garden was rarely closed, 
except when I was leaning against it, my elaborately 
heated rooms were as icy as charity before our con- 
versation was concluded. But on one especial morn- 
ing there was so much excitement in the hall over the 
knocker subject that I opened the door myself, and 
kept at bay the cold by a participation in a heated 
discussion over what was to be done and how to do it. 
Although our back door is never locked, and thieves 
can, and have passed over garden walls into whole 
rows of houses, our front door is never left on the 
latch for a minute. Nor are keys delivered over to 
strange servants without a suspicion that duplicates 
will be made and the house robbed — decently, by the 
front door, as it should be in Chelsea. 

I don't know how long we must know 9, servant 

1 58 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

before she can be trusted with a key, but the new 
maid who had taken the place of the bewildered creat- 
ure I drove to drink by the gift of four shillings had 
not yet arrived at that stage of trust, and, in order 
to avoid knocking, our householder admitted making 
an arrangement with her which got no farther than 
the first attempt. She would not give the maid a key, 
nor would she leave the door on the latch, nor would 
she have me aroused, so she placed the key in a piece 
of white paper in the boot-scraper, and hung a card 
above my card. Hers read, ''Mary, find the key and 
come in." Strange as it may seem, this game of hide- 
and-seek had appealed to earlier birds than Mary, 
and when the rightful participator in the morning's 
fun arrived, the worm had been found and carried 
off. The landlady agreed with me that it was very 
unsportsman-like if the thief's name was not Mary, 
but she failed to get the unalloyed joy out of the 
situation which was mine. 

''The lock must be changed — we'll be robbed," 
she ejaculated. 

"We'll be robbed, anyway, if we go on leaving the 
back door open all night," I argued. "Personally, 
I'd rather they would come through the hall than the 
bath-room. It's more respectable." 

"It's not respectable for them to come through 
either door," she commented, shortly. 

She had me there. Burglars are not classed among 
the eligible, and I endeavored to soothe her. If it 
was a burglar who found the key, he would have come 
in immediately, for one of his trade knew that locks 
could be changed in a day. 

"In a day?" she echoed. "It will take a week." 

And so it did. With the ancient wedding-chest 

.159 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

pushed across the front door by the last one m, which 
was Gladys, until a British workman had been found 
and demobbed and importuned and overpaid, and 
new keys were made for us along with a new lock. 
That night Beechey rode down on 11 bus to watch 
the leading man go through his big scene and to ride 
home with me in the growler. Her mousey eyes were 
dancing. 

''Do you know what she wants to do now?" I 
didn't. ''She wants to tie the key on a string, then tie 
the string to the knocker, and drop the key through 
the slot for letters. So that Mary, and only Mary, 
can pull it outside from the inside. Did you ever?" 

No, I never. 

If I thought the landlady strange, she thought me 
stranger, and yet she was more generous than I at 
this present moment. As I grew more and more fond 
of her, I continued hostile to her methods, whereas 
she, with less natural flexibility than my pioneer birth 
has granted me, managed to accept, even to applaud, 
my innovations. "You're all so clever," she once said; 
"that's the reason we're afraid of you." Which, of 
course, was amazing to me, as the Americans are afraid 
of the English, probably not because they are clever, 
but for the consciousness that they have had at least 
a thousand more years than we have had for the ap- 
plication of knowledge, and with it manners and all 
the charming graces that our rawer land lacks. 

Yet, like the theater-housekeeper who preferred the 
newspaper blower to a fire-lighter, she had no intention 
of adopting these innovations. They belonged to a 
younger people, and she must go on her prescribed way. 

She even grew in time to admire my clothes-horse. 
The clothes-horse was purchased as I had but six 

160 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

hooks screwed beneath a shelf in the Hving-room for 
my entire wardrobe. Having come from a country 
which is supposed to have profited largely by the war, 
I had more gowns and many more coats than the lady 
in the villa whom — in the sixth chapter — I endeavored 
to coerce into sleeping in her drawing-room. Indeed, 
I had more clothes than usual, as I was supplied with 
the cast-off garments of my friends while I myself 
worked for the war, and I may add here that it was 
not a bad scheme. 

There was no use appealing to my landlady. She 
would say, ''You wouldn't want any more hooks, 
would you?" And I would either answer, "No," or 
snap at her. The conversation of the American is 
made up of extremes. The expense of buying house- 
hold necessities for a home that was supposed to be 
furnished was already so great that I did not burst 
into the purchase of a wardrobe, although I visited 
many shops with the idea of securing a lowly old- 
fashioned hat-rack or hall-stand, or some effect which 
would hold dress-hangers. 

Of course, I would not tell the clerk what I wanted 
the hat-rack for; he would not sell it to me if I was 
not going to use it for hats. I had learned this by 
venturing into an antique-shop with a view to pur- 
chasing a brass fire-screen. It consisted of a base 
something like a hat-tree and a strong crosspiece on 
which I could have hung any amount of gowns. I 
had just been complimented by the landlady on my 
inventiveness, or I would not have told the antiquity- 
man, full of antique thoughts, what I was going to do 
with the fire-screen. He said it would never answer, 
and while I contended that it would, wishing to show 

him with my coat — and his — he remembered that it 

161 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

had been already sold as a fire-screen — the which it 
was — and bowed me out. I wanted to go back and 
ask him if I kept it before the fire, and used my clothes 
for a screen, could I have it. But I was afraid of him. 

Even archaic old hat-racks were prohibitive in the 
shops; England has no pine forest to draw upon for 
cheap furniture, and not a stick of household ware 
was made during the war. I don't see how any young 
couple, provided they can find a home, dare equip 
it, for above all high prices at present furniture shows 
the greatest increase. Should they find a home, they 
must under no circumstances have a baby. The 
meanest cradle in the meanest shop I visited cost 
thirty dollars, and it is small wonder that the cockney 
is undersized, since I am told they are brought up 
in bureau drawers. 

All dealers in antique-shops were not severe with 
me. One pleasant gentleman sold me a brass kettle 
instead of the hat-rack for which I was searching, 
engaging me the while by his stories as a special con- 
stable during the war. And it was worth a brass 
kettle, for I had been wondering at these little copper 
devices which middle-aged shopkeepers affect on their 
left lapel. Indeed a man looks but half clad who 
goes about the streets of London without some kind 
of emblem upon his breast. This was the old man who 
suggested screwing hooks in the back of my bed, as 
my landlady would probably not discover them until 
after my departure. I told him he didn't know my 
landlady, and he laughed, saying I would be sure to 
find some American way of taking advantage of her, 
which was no doubt kindly meant. He understood 
Americans very well, he told me, as he had a wife 
living in Seattle. And the only thing I could not 

162 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

understand was any wife living in Seattle with such 
a pleasant husband living in London. It reminds me 
vaguely of the New York woman cutting a wide 
swath in London, who told me she had moved there 
to be nearer her husband. '^\nd where is your hus- 
band?" I asked. 

''Hongkong," she replied. 

Encouraged by his sympathy, I went to the Amer- 
ican shop and bought there a five-foot, twofold pine 
clothes-horse, some hooks to screw into the cross- 
pieces, and sent the treasures to the maisonnette. 
And I arrived home just in time, the next afternoon, 
to keep my landlady from despatching the horse to 
the kitchen. Even then she did not think the kitchen 
was the place for the horse, not that she preferred a 
stable for it, but that laundry is never done in the 
house. Clothes go off and get themselves washed 
in some unspeakable place, and we wear them next 
to our skin as we read articles at clubs on hygiene 
in the home. 

She was not much more relieved when I led the 
animal from the sitting-room into the bedroom, and 
her eyebrow never came down until she was invited 
in to see the clothes-horse, to all appearances a 
cretonne-covered screen around my dressing-table, 
with garments hanging on the inside of the fold, ob- 
scured to all but me. In the hope that she would 
emulate me, for she was providing other maisonnettes, 
I pretended I had read of the idea in my English 
morning paper, but I never deceived her for a moment. 

I began the day with leisured enjoyment of my 
newspaper, for there I found the chronicled events 
of the day before at which I had expected to be an 
onlooker, but had let the occasion slip by, and the 

163 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

promised excitements of the day to come, which I 
also expected to participate in — as I sipped my coffee. 
At first, better to learn of the pageants which I ought 
to attend, I took in a large, unwieldy paper, difficult 
to read in bed, and undoubtedly proportioned for 
the conservative class who ate their breakfast at a 
table. It was full of court doings, the edge of which 
is always open to the public, curbstone participators, 
yet I discontinued the journal on that day a correctly 
framed advertisement of a drawing-room entertain- 
ment offered in its columns ''laughter with pro- 
priety." I felt hedged in by this suggestion, and I 
since have had recourse to a smaller sheet, evidently 
designed for a single bed. 

You will observe I say, "discontinued the paper," 
whereas a short time ago I would have said ''stopped" 
it. I must be feeling the influence of a little lord of 
fourteen who shares with me the same dentist. Teeth 
have an outrageous trick of going back on you in 
London, and it is probably arranged by the govern- 
ment, anxious to have you leave vast sums in their 
country. The little lord and I were both waiting in 
the anteroom of back Punches. No, it was not a 
pugilistic ring. I should say "full of back numbers 
of Punch. ^^ And I was eying him with a great deal 
of interest not only because he was a lord talking to 
his aunt, who was a duchess, but in the hope of dis- 
covering some reason why an American boy and an 
English boy, both with the same number of legs and 
noses, and general proclivities, should be so absolutely 
different. This nice little fellow, tapping his stick 
against his boot as he talked, no doubt had a sense of 
fun, just as the American boy has. They wear pretty 

much the same kind of clothes (barring the stick), 

164 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

certainly read the same books, and fall in love with 
the same kind of girls, but here he was using a stilted 
language which would make an American boy, in no 
way more of a boy than he, want to fight him. 

It was this little chap who had found Punch a bit 
of a bore of late, and had ''discontinued" it. He had 
not stopped it; he was wonderfully and spontaneously 
correct in his speech. And that very thing may be 
the difference. We have to achieve form — they start 
out with it. That may be the reason I see very little 
difference between the well-bred grown-up in America 
and over here. After a quarter of a century, the young 
Englishman begins to take on a cosmopolitanism; 
his insularities are merged into newer attitudes of 
life, just as the American tones himself down by 
absorbing into his eager nature the poise of the older 
civilizations with which he has come in contact. 

If I thought the little lord was funny, he must 
have been more amused by my companion, who was 
our comedian, dragged there by me to have an aching 
tooth assuaged. As an emergency case he was sent 
ahead, yet would have remained continuing to suffer 
when his summons came. ''It's all very well for you," 
he said, with a belligerent air to the entire waiting- 
room, as I endeavored to prod hmi through the door; 
"you've been here before, but I've never had a dentist 
in my mouth!" At twenty-five and over the American 
and Englishman would have smiled. The American 
boy would have guffawed. But the little lord held 
himself politely in. 

Even if there were no small peer to engage me, I 
found in the official program for the day enough to 
keep me running from one point to another, and then 
miss half the show. For the longer the stranger re- 

105 



AN AMERICANOS LONDON 

mains the more he appreciates that London is one 
great pageant, and that the patient sightseer need 
never grow weary. I say patient, for if you are an 
onlooker you must wait. Americans are not good 
waiters, but the EngUsh still have the calm faculty 
of standing still to watch the world go by. 

I had thought that the enormous activities of the 
war, in which every one was concerned, would cause 
a flagging of devotion to somebody else's social tri- 
umphs, but again the crowds are forming outside St. 
Margaret's Church when a famous beauty marries; 
again they line up when the Prince of Wales goes to 
the city to become a Fishmonger; again they stand to 
watch other people's horses cantering up and down 
the Rotten Row in Hyde Park. 

Little children of the rich who ride on small ponies, 
attended by careful grooms or red-faced mothers, 
have strange company these days, such as their 
forbears never reckoned on. Australians with tufted 
ostrich feathers in their broad hats slouch low in their 
saddles on lean mounts. Americans ride by with 
loose lines, and leave their horses tethered by the in- 
verting of the reins over the beasts' heads, while they 
talk to pretty ladies in the park. Along the East 
Drive huge army trucks are allowed to pound where 
once only private carriages made their way — the hack- 
ing vehicles still denied that aristocratic course. Girls 
occasionally drive these trucks, as they drive the big 
limousmes for the army. You can tell the estate of 
the chauffeuse by means of the quality of the fur on 
her khaki overcoat, yet she just as cheerily takes or- 
ders. One, 1 admit, was whistling while her chief 
was directing her. Then she looked at him and smiled 

as she closed the limousine door. From him there was 

166 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

the faintest softening of his face, and again I was 
humbled, for the war has created fierce appetites 
and I know now that I cannot run away from them. 

Nor will these women with the rich fur on their 
collars return easily to the early existence controlled 
by Victorian precedent. I was passing a house in 
Park Lane the other day. An august lady was get- 
ting into a car, while the daughter of the lady, once 
more in ''civies," motioned to the chauffeur to give 
his place to her. '^Oh, I say, Taddy, I wouldn't," 
protested the grande dame. "Stuff!" returned the 
daughter, and sat in the driver's seat, while mother 
within the limousine wondered what they were all 
coming to. 

They are coming to some hard times before the 
women war-workers of good estate are disposed of. 
The young woman of birth has rejoiced in her freedom, 
and is loath to give up what job she can hold. One 
would have thought that with all those graves in 
Flanders, there might now be work for all, but it 
would take more than a million dead to create suffi- 
cient vacancies for overcrowded England. In an 
excerpt from my morning paper I note that in certain 
departments an appeal was made to married women 
to give way to unmarried women in need of clerk- 
ships, and at Woolwich Arsenal between two and 
three thousand women not actually dependent upon 
their earnings immediately gave place; yet on the 
other hand, at a very large factory full of women not 
in real need there was no response whatever. And 
now the papers are full of the cries of men who find 
their old jobs usurped by women. ''Doing better 
work," their bosses say. "Working for less money," 
they do not add. It makes one very sad, for it would 

12 167 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

seem that the war is by no means over; only the op- 
ponents are different. 

Just as an army truck going down the King's Drive 
creates no excitement, so does a body of Household 
Guards in glittering uniform, on black horses, but 
mildly attract. The Tommy in hospital-blue and the 
soldier not yet demobbed, who loiter in the park, are 
inclined to sneer at the trappings. Although they 
line up for royalties and brilliant evidences of a mo- 
narchical government, they do not receive the old 
order of things with awe. 

The King and Queen, and Queen of Rumania came 
to our play early in our season, and there was much 
more stir among the American actors than there was 
in the British audience. The royal entrance is up 
a side-street, next to our stage-door, and all the after- 
noon during our matinee there was an industrious 
cleaning of the royal reception-room, which leads 
from the door to the box, a letting down of the awning, 
and an unrolling of the red carpet (I wonder why it 
is always of that hue? Think of a lifetime of stepping 
on turkey-red, if you didn't like the color). Mrs. 
Wren had my laces reeking in gasolene, and looked 
upon it as nothing less than the hand of God that 
waved my hair that morning. 

Having played before royalty years ago, I coun- 
seled the company to feel no disappointment if the 
house did not laugh as much as usual. They would 
be watching their rulers, but I was wrong — again. 
The audience paid no attention to their sovereigns 
from the time they promptly seated themselves to 
that moment when they took their departure to the 
tune of the national air. And the play never went 
better. Since then the awning has been let down 

168 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

many times over the entrance, for royalties have come 
again and again, and the httle princes have bought 
seats and sat in the stalls. For a while we peeped 
through the stage-door to watch their departure, but 
on the night I discovered one of the older princesses 
without a self-starter to her car my interest waned, 
and in time the exhortation from the management not 
to look toward the royal box was idle, for we forgot 
their presence. 

The English royalties can teach the average theater- 
goer a lesson, however. Like the pit (the plain people) , 
they come on time. With a full program before them 
every day, they keep their appointments to the minute, 
and while the tragedies of the war — the snapped re- 
lationship between kin, the assassinated cousins — 
have made them careworn in appearance, they keep 
smiling. 

Possibly one of the greatest indications of the ap- 
preciation of the unrest among their subjects is the 
endless visiting of the sovereigns upon their humble 
people. ''Surprise visits" they are called, a form of 
pleasantry which, personally, I could do without. 
One day is for babies, one day for an inspection of 
mean housing, one for feverish miners, one for re- 
sentful colonials, and always, always the hospitals 
for the wounded. The people's respect for royalty 
and their indifference to it is curiously blended. They 
admire — and make a joke of their admifation. On the 
night of the attendance of the King and Queen at our 
theater I overheard one of the stage-hands speaking 
to another. They had both been inspecting their 
majesties through the curtain. 

"She looks well, Bill," said one. 

"She do look well," agreed Bill. Then, as though 

169 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

ashamed of his enthusiasm, ''But she didn't come for 
my washing this week!" 

While the passing show is for any one who will wait 
to see it, we of our company are a faint part of the 
procession itself, for every night there come to our 
greenroom the American war correspondents passing 
through the city, Red Cross dignitaries, or our sol- 
diers sent over from the Continent on various missions. 
They are not all officers. Privates fill the room, 
homesick boys waiting for news of their folks, girl- 
entertainers straight from Coblenz, with the experi- 
ences that would fill volumes if they knew how to 
write them down. Between scenes of our little war 
play on the stage we snatch a moment to ask of the 
greater drama in which they have played, while the 
call-boy listens for our cue to take us back to oft- 
repeated, higher-sounding phrases than these real 
participators ever uttered. 

One night a woman correspondent was allowed to 
slip into the entrance where the understudies sit. 
(It is the O. P. side, which, being interpreted, means 
Opposite Prompt.) And she was good enough to 
cry over my nightly lament for my dead soldier son. 
Yet she had seen many boys really die, and was 
carrying in her hands at that moment her helmet, 
scarred by the shrapnel marks from a hundred times 
under fire. I cannot for the life of me understand how 
a war drama can interest an individual who has known 
the real theater of war. It must be that reproduction 
in art does not pass unheeded, even though the audi- 
ence is unaware of its appreciation of it. It must 
be, although frequently disputed, that acting is really 
artistry. 

But, while this may explain their interest in the 

170 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

war drama, it does not make clear why thousands 
should flock to that great auditorium, Olympia, to 
see a sham battle which has lately been engaging the 
attention of London. For four years England has 
heard the faint roar of real guns. No detonation has 
come to their ears which has not carried with it de- 
struction to some British household. No spectator 
goes to GljTiipia who has not in some way been af- 
fected by the war, yet they fill the benches to witness 
this child's play of taking mimic trenches. 

And they will talk of the show at Ol^inpia when 
they will not talk of actual battling. One does not 
dine nor lunch nor tea in England now without the 
presence of at least one soldier, yet I have never heard 
a man touch upon his experiences. I don't know how 
he can avoid them, when for years he has had little 
else for a topic. An actor will necessarily say, in the 
recounting of a story having to do with himself, ''I 
was playing that season in So-and-so — and a rotten 
part it was, too!" But these young men with decora- 
tions on their breasts do not say, ''When I was at 
Vimy Ridge, the day we made the hill — we had a 
rotten location — " They don't say anything. They 
laugh and listen to their women-folk talking of do- 
mestic difficulties — or of air raids. And — this is 
funny — I don't think to ask them anything about 
themselves that has to do with the fight. Or is the 
whole subject too vast to touch upon? I don't know. 
Imagine asking a man who wears a Mons ribbon, and 
must have seen the whole struggle, what interested 
him most in the' war. If he had been any of the men 
I know over here, he would answer, ''Getting back 
home." 

A little while ago I had tea in a jolly garden over- 

171 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

looking Hyde Park — the kind of house I looked at 
wistfully for years from Knightsbridge — and one guest 
there did go so far as to speak of his shattered arm 
which hung at his side. He spoke of it because his 
hostess bluntly asked him how it was. ''It will always 
be a dub," he replied, casually, going on to tell me 
all about Parsees in India. Yet he had fought from 
the first engagement, she managed to let me know 
through ejaculations over remotely removed Indian 
characteristics, and his regiment was just back to 
the ground they had lost in the first retreat when the 
bugle sang truce. Only, while it was the same regi- 
ment, there were but three of the original number 
regaining their old positions, unless an invisible host 
marched by the side of the newer comrades. 

I stumbled out something then of my own curious 
emotion as I awoke in New York upon the morning 
of the real armistice, and lay in my bed listening to 
the shriek of the sirens and the answering roar of the 
people as they turned out in the clear dawn. "And the 
noisier the city grew," I told them, "the more I 
thought of that great muffling of guns along the miles 
of battle-line over there. The din seemed to intensify 
the sense of that silence, somehow or other." 

"It was quiet," granted the colonel. 

"Did the boys cry?" I dared to ask. 

"No," said the gentleman who had fought at Mons. 
"They just sat down and picked off vermin. They 
felt they could get somewhere with them, at last." 

It is when I go away from a household like this one, 
the hostess with one dead boy and another with a 
dismembered body, or when a mother who has lost 
her son in real life and comes back (back on the stage) 
to tell me that in the play I do just what she did, 

172 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

that I marvel they bother to receive us Americans at 
all. For the English women, while knowing their 
own politics very well, know very little of the workings 
of other countries. They translate our retarded entry 
into the war as the concerted wish of a country to 
make -money and remain comfortable. There is no 
use going into a dissertation on this subject now, but 
back of their kindly personal feelings many of them 
read us as a nation in this fashion. I make small effort 
to combat it, for if it is their sincere belief, how bitter 
must be the hearts of women with sons killed, who, 
to their mind, might have been spared had we entered 
the fray earlier, and, by the force of our numbers, 
shortened its hideous duration. 

It is grimly amusing, however, that those who hold 
our army in contempt at the same time lay such 
stress on what we could have accomplished had these 
same forces been added to theirs at an earlier period. 
Alas! I think we would have occupied the same place 
in their cognizances that we hold now, for — But 
there! I am reaching the crux of my own deductions 
in the middle of a chapter which started with mild 
divertissements, yet I must write it down as it comes 
to me, since the social paradox of to-day is this natural 
mJngling of light laughter with deeply serious thoughts. 
For it seems to me that, back of the sore hearts of 
bereft mothers and wives — beside that, perhaps I 
should say — which is so understandable, is an un- 
easiness that emanates from a purely commercial 
anxiety; that all jealousy between nations such as 
England and America is founded on competition in 
trade. 

It is a pugilistic encounter without gloves. When 
one nation slips and falls the count is taken, the 

173 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

countries looking on hold their breath, the world is 
tense. The nation that has slipped and fallen does 
not rise to its feet, the count is finished, and the world 
acclaims the conqueror. I know it is Utopian, and 
cannot be, but sometimes as I go about these London 
streets I wish I could see pinned upon the breasts of 
the paper-venders who carry the red-lettered news to 
the passer-by that my country has cried out to this 
country: ''We are your allies in peace as in war. 
Let us build up your trade." 

But I suppose such Britons as have discounted 
what efforts we have made — and to me they seem not 
inconsiderable — would call this offer damned cheek. 
To change some minds in England — to set them work- 
ing differently — would be as outrageous to the owners 
of the minds as the striking off of an honorable quar- 
tering on their coat of arms and replacing it with the 
bar sinister. Though too precious a people, too pol- 
ished down, for ancient hates, they still possess 
ancient prejudices which resolve themselves into sus- 
picions. Opposed to whatever is new, they naturally 
suspect a new country. With centuries of statecraft 
it is impossible for such minds to believe that the 
United States has no ulterior motive in its generosity. 
In our own phrasing, they look for the nigger in the 
wood-pile. One British host, with unparalleled lack 
of repression, scoffed aloud the other day when I 
spoke of the sincerity of our dollar-a-year millionaires. 
He, no doubt, believes that our great financiers 
worked through the hot months in Washington to 
pull off a little deal in shoe leather or tin cans. 

Splendidly enough, for me, since my problem over 
here is but a domestic one, this is the mind which 
refuses a bit of carpet for the maid's room. It is the 

174 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

feudal mind, and it is probably suffering more in 
this heavy whirlpool of new ideas which is swirling 
around all classes in England than any of us, who 
have no traditions to hamper us, can understand. 
With all this healthy effort going on in Great Britain 
for a more sympathetic understanding, it is a pleasure 
to realize that the ruling mentalities are not impreg- 
nated by these moldy principles. And, again, it is 
not the mind of the individual, or a group of minds, 
which is inimical to development, but the imprint 
of an old system upon this spirit which is seeking 
freedom for itself and for others. 

I have said, '^ splendidly enough for me," for it 
renders the situation less complex when the fault in 
small as well as large instances can be traced to noth- 
ing more nor less than an ancient prejudice that is 
growing fainter. As in a lithograph upon stone where 
each impression becomes more blurred until the origi- 
nal scheme of the picture fades into nothingness, so 
will this old regime grow more and more meaningless, 
until the paper pulled from the press will issue un- 
stained by the obsolete tracery on the tablets. 



Chapter XII 

I LEARNED something more about the feudal 
system, which I hope I will manage to keep to 
myself until the end of the chapter, leading up 
to it by dramatically recounting my experiences which 
have to do with the cooking of tripe. It must be quite 
discoverable to all that my mentality is not sufficiently 
enormous to dispose of the affairs of the British na- 
tion, or any other nation no matter how tiny, but side- 
lights on the situation came humbly to me through 
tripe and other offal. 

For tripe, sweetbreads, brains, liver, and such edible 
internal arrangements of fish, fowl, and flesh are 
known over here as offal, and since they are called 
offal they are low, and since they are low any one who 
eats them is low — therefore not the lady. I arrived 
at this understanding through the continued efforts 
to replace Gladys with a good housekeeper who would 
take charge of everything, and allow Beechey to get 
to the studio and paint hair on the dog portrait before 
night closed in on her early-closing studio. 

My desire to supplant Gladys with a working 
housekeeper grew more keen after Beechey had ren- 
dered her first accounts. She had dipped into her 
money, the accounts showed, and I owed her three 
pounds. Yet, upon going over the entries myself, I 
found that — instead — Beechey owed me four pounds 

176 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

and then some. She sweetly admitted her arithmetical 
errors and was not as angry with me as some women 
would liave been upon discovering that they were in 
the wrong. But she besought me not to tell the 
president of the guild which worked for the soldiers' 
orphans, as she had offered to give her services as 
bookkeeper to this guild, elated by her prospective 
success over my accounts. The lady, for some reason 
which Beechey could not understand, had declined 
this generous desire to do her bit, and Beechey now 
realized it was just as well, and she would paint them 
a picture instead. 

I had no intention of telling the president, but I 
did tell the leading man, for it was he who went over 
the accounts with me. He didn't know any more 
about accounts than Beechey did, and it was to prove 
to him how helpless they would both be if they ever 
attempted to work oat any of the problems of life 
together that I let him see her deficiencies, I was 
cruel, to be kind. In spite of my impatience with 
other people's love-affairs in America, I found myself 
speculating a good deal on the kind of husband 
Beechey ought to have, and the leading man was not 
even at the foot of the class. Beechey must marry 
a business man as soon as I could find him, and the 
leading man must marry some one who would clean 
up his room and keep his dressing-table tidy. I had 
tried disgusting Beechey by arranging for her to step 
into his dressing-room one night and observe the chaos, 
but she had not observed anything at all, beyond the 
man himself, and thought the room was most hand- 
some with a very aristocratic nose. My actor-friend 
behaved just as foolishly over Beechey charging me 

nine shillings for cocoa instead of iiinepence. He 

177 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

said she was a darling, and was perfectly indifferent 
to the way I was being ever so innocently robbed. 

One of the curses of old age is the development of 
theories. They grow like fungi on old bark. A theory 
to be applied to somebody else is all that is left of a 
joy that was once yours. It's the fruit of a tree whose 
intoxicating blossoms once filled your heart, not your 
mind. What I don't quite get is the poor quality of 
a theory that occasionally springs from a highly 
fertilized experience. I was still clinging to my be- 
lief in opposites. However, in this chapter I must 
stick firmly to what lessons were derived from tripe. 

The pleasantest part of a performance in the theater 
is the going home — we are like the soldiers in that — 
and the pleasantest night of all is ''treasury," as they 
say in England. "Pretty night," some of us call it. 
Yet eleven o'clock is an agreeable hour after one's 
work is over, although the work has not been paid 
for, when a stout little war-'oss is waiting in the rain 
to take me home. I was very secure in my four- 
wheeler, and when the chill spring storms grew tor- 
rential I wished there could be some way of taking 
the driver outside inside. I am sure the war-'oss 
could have managed very well without any assistance, 
for he frequently negotiated the turns while the driver 
flapped his arms like a windmill in his effort to avoid 
complete blood-curdling. 

I never grew very well acquainted with my cabby, 
owing to our occupation of different strategical posi- 
tions. His respect for me increased the more often 
royalty came to our door, and our growler stood along- 
side the carriages or motors with their familiar scar- 
let hair-line decoration on the deep red body of the 
equipages. He became a familiar at the stage-door 

178 



' 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

entrance, however, waiting for me inside while he 
talked to the night watchman of the days he drove 
the Sisters Something-or-other from the Halhambra. 
I never could make out who the sisters were, as my 
appearance caused a cessation of the topic, but I 
fancy they learned to know him better than I did. 
That is one of the disadvantages of being a leading 
lady — you cannot get well acquainted with cabbies. 

The nearest we came to any degree of intimacy was 
the night his lamps wouldn't burn and we were 
scolded all the way down the Mall by observant bob- 
bies. I would not have believed that one small, un- 
lighted growler could attract so much attention. Had 
I sat on the cab roof, illumining the way by a search- 
light, no one would have noticed me. It took us an 
hour to get to Chelsea, for he would no more light up 
again thau the lamps would once more flicker out, 
whereupon, fearful of the next bobby, I would tap 
upon the window and he would descend to strike 
matches. It ended by my carrying the lantern inside, 
held close to the window, like a wise but indolent 
Virgin taking her lamp for a drive. But no matter 
at what hour I arrived, Beechey would be waiting 
for me, and after being told by my cabby to ''mind the 
step, ma'am," and agreeing that it was "'orrid weath- 
er," I would tap with my umbrella upon the window, 
to prove I was not a burglar (as burglars do not carry 
umbrellas), and Beechey would let me in quietly, so 
as not to disturb the Pomeranians. 

Then we would sip chocolate and talk of ways of 
supplanting Gladys. Beechey had ideas, which re- 
minded me vaguely of the lady who had a great deal 
of taste — all bad. One night it was the securing of a 

bo7ine by advertising in the columns of the Belgian 

179 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

newspaper established in London upon that nation's 
overflow into England. She said it would be no trouble 
at all to secure a bonne, and it would be good for our 
French, as even Belgian French was better than no 
French at all. I had a feeling that she wanted a 
honne so that she could paint her. But a Belgian in 
a studio would be better than a Gladys in a kitchen, 
and I started out to trace the newspaper to its source. 
The trouble with this idea was there wasn't any news- 
paper. It had ceased publication on the return of 
the people to their country. They had been going 
home for some time, and, as far as I can make out, no 
departing guests were ever more warmly speeded. 

It is sad that any one could be turned into a pauper 
after six months' support (I am sure I would become 
one in less time than that, if I did not die of shock 
at being supported even for a day), and the Belgians 
had three years of generous fare. I don't know any- 
thing funnier, . or anything more melancholy, than to 
start an English circle on the subject of the Belgians 
those in the circle have taken care of. It doesn't take 
a circle. Going along the streets of small villages in 
the dead of night, you can heaj* those passing you 
talking of their departed guests. Scraps of eluci- 
dating conversation come to you: ''Never thanked me 
— the best cuts of meat, my dear — simply laughed 
at the wood-pile; I was willing to pay them — " And 
so on till the heart grows sick. 

The visitors, probably, had a stunned reason of 
their own. Their country, by its resistance and con- 
sequent devastation, they may believe, kept the Ger- 
mans from the Channel ports while the British pre- 
pared their hosts. If it had not been Belgians in 
England it might have been Germans, they probably 

ISO 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

figure, and there is no argument over which race was 
preferable to the British. Well, they are gone now, 
and so is the Belgian paper in which we were to ad- 
vertise for a femme de menage, and Beechey, who had 
no doubt visualized her spring picture of an old 
grand'mere making lace, already hanging on the line 
at the Academy, with great elasticity of mind de- 
stroyed the canvas. She now concentrated on a 
darky. ''Why do we not get a colored girl?" she 
asked, suddenly, one night. 

''What makes you think there are any colored girls 
around?" I returned. 

"There are colored men, so there must be colored 
girls." 

Beechey still remains firmly an American, holding 
on to a few simple beliefs over the instinctive prefer- 
ence of a race for its own, and of a colored man's 
abhorrence for a white woman. One can't go into 
that. At least, I need not, although England will find 
soon that it will have to. Among all the perplexing 
questions with which it must grapple, Great Britain, 
to its amazement, is confronted with a black-and- 
white question of its own. After some fifty years' 
rightful censure of the rowdies of the United States 
for their violence toward the black, their own rowdies 
have developed violence. And, I regret to have to 
admit it, "mere sex," not fear emanating from force 
of superior numbers, is the cause of the disturbances. 
It is a matter that master minds can yet control 
over here. But when a master, or at least an excellent 
mind like that of a well-known Englishman, writes 
a novel martyrizing two colored men because they 
cannot find any women of England to love them, and 

does not offer as a solution a college-full of gentle black 

181 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

girls in America, I suppose the mob thinks it time to 
take matters into their own crude hands. 

Beechey, however, did discover some colored girls 
going into the stage-door of ''Chu-Chin-Chow," and 
dared to ask them if they would contemplate a do- 
mestic position. There was no insolence in their 
manner, but they told her they were artists in the 
theater (probably appearing as slaves, with peacock- 
feather fans), and preferred it to kitchen- work. For 
once their poor black skins were of value, and I think 
that this form of the commercialization of their color 
is not to be despised. 

I did not encourage tempting them. It was enough 
to have the actress Gladys wading around among our 
pots and pans; and Beechey, by easy processes of 
gradation, returned to white folk with but a slight 
deviation in an effort to secure an East Indian. She 
had heard about him — a man of excessive pride who 
had been fighting with an English regiment, and re- 
fused to go home until he could return with fifty 
pounds. A desire to earn fifty pounds was his only 
qualification for being a ''general," so far as I could 
find out. But Beechey said East Indians could do 
anything, and she knew now why she had been im- 
pelled to buy so much Indian meal. I listened to her, 
although I knew perfectly well that she wanted a 
Mohammedan in her household so that she could go 
marketing up the King's Road with him stalking along 
a pace behind her, very much enturbaned. She told 
me a number of times he had a turban. I could hear 
her saying to the fishmonger, ''Give the kippers to 
my Indian servant." Still, we might have had him 
if he had not discovered at the place he was then oc- 
cupying fifty pounds all in a lump under a mattress, 

182 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

and, his noble ambitions realized, he returned sur- 
reptitiously to his far home. 

After these lost motions I revisited the registry, 
said a few short words over the poor exchange of 
Gladys for twenty-two shillings and sixpence, and was 
then conducted into a cubicle to meet Mrs. Baines. 
I liked Mrs. Baines from the start, and I like her now. 
She had a dying husband in a sanatorium, a growing 
daughter who probably ate a good deal, and a very 
fine letter from an aircraft factory where she had 
worked during the war. She also had pre-war references 
when she worked as a general. She did not mind being 
a general again, she said they must all come to it 
once more, and she did not wish to draw her out-of- 
work donation any longer than was necessary. She 
wanted a pound a week, and, to look at her, was 
worth it. 

I then began making mistakes. I began conniving 
ways for her to earn more money than the pound a 
week, which she admitted would barely suffice. I 
wished to introduce innovations to her advantage 
into a life that had been circumscribed for centuries. 
How she could remain so intelligent, with all those 
years of conformed views, was probably the most 
astonishing thing about her. But of course, in my 
violent desire to make a woman of her evident in- 
telligence comfortable, I refused to take that into 
consideration. I wanted to make her over for her 
own good at one fell swoop. 

She wished to keep a room or two somewhere, so 
as to maintain a home for her daughter, and I then 
suggested that she take two days off a week for my 
laundry, returning to her home after breakfast. I 
would pay her extra for this, and she could be more 

13 183 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

with her child. But a frightened look came into her 
face. Of course she would like to be with her daugh- 
ter, and she had always done her own washing, but 
she had never washed for any one else. She said it 
was unusual. 

The idea was dismissed — hurriedly. But the inter- 
view ended in an arrangement for another one, at 
which daughter was to be present. My busy mind 
went on planning for daughter's welfare — a young 
girl shouldn't be left alone too much — and in a burst 
of hospitality I suggested that they both make their 
home with me. While I could read further confusion 
in her eyes, Mrs. Baines was also pleased. It would 
save room rent, and in exchange for the girl's food 
she could make a pretense of sewing for me. I in- 
sisted upon being business-like. Mrs. Baines, exer- 
cising the restraint I should have possessed, asked me 
first to look at the girl — nothing should be decided 
upon quickly, she said. She did not say that she really 
wished her daughter to give me the "once-over," 
and my brain was so reeling with happiness over the 
acquisition of a working housekeeper that I forbore 
to be impatient over the delay. I would have had her 
move in the next day, baggage, daughter, and — piano. 

I did not tell the landlady that my housekeeper 
was going to bring a piano, and I kept peeping into 
Gladys's pennant-decorated room to see if^ the bed 
could possibly accommodate two people. If it 
couldn't, they could have my wider one, moving it 
down every night when the landlady wasn't looking. 
I simply was not going to give up Mrs. Baines. 

Yet I did lose her. Daughter was as bouncing as 
I feared she would be, and would undoubtedly eat 
the seventeen shilUngs' worth of food which Mrs. 

184 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

Wren said her keep would come to. She also had a 
good deal of manner— much more than I had — the 
kind that is acquired from sitting on a piano-stool 
while her mother worked for her. But I could see 
that she was the apple of this mother's eye, and that 
she would undoubtedly be contented to stay when 
piano and girl were once firmly wedged into their 
quarters. It was my fond belief that if the movers 
ever got the piano down the basement stairs it could 
never be taken up again — they would have to stay. 
Still, I did not wish to appear too lavish, and I thought 
it well at this second interview to admit to Mrs. 
Baines that we were economical, although artists. 
For instance, we did not always care for a joint for 
dinner — even on a Sunday. 

"Not a joint for Sunday!" Mrs. Baines echoed. 

I should have stopped there. I already knew that 
Mrs. Wren and the other dressers gathered together 
on Monday evenings to discuss the merits of the 
joint they had the day before, and the difficulty of 
getting it on Saturday. The Httlest girl's dresser 
had a fearful time with her joints, and admitted that 
the last one under discussion must have been a cut 
from some wild beast. Another night I learned that 
the wife of the property-man had been utterly unable 
to secure anything but a rabbit. It had been sold 
with its head off, which was against the law, but it 
was "tike-it-or-leave-it" with the butchers these 
days, and she did 'Hike" it. Yet, being a woman of 
spirit, she had carried it no farther than the first 
constable, who had pronounced it to be a cat. Mrs. 
Wren lived across from the butcher's, and said people 
at one time had stood all Friday night in line waiting 

to get the best cuts for the Sunday dinner. Yet here 

isr, 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

was I, in the face of all this precedent, telhng my gem, 
Mrs. Baines, I did not insist upon a joint, and — yes, I 
said it — could she cook tripe? 

I remember distinctly her reply. She said, with per- 
fect control, that tripe and onions made a very nice 
dish. She did not lie down on the floor and scream, or 
in any way suggest that I was not acting the lady. 
So I frivoled along through my taste for kidneys, 
liver, brains, and other viscera, quite blind to the fact 
that Mrs. Baines was receding from me as I spoke. 
I must admit I had no premonition of a catastrophe 
on the following morning. I had just told Gladys 
that I was getting in a housekeeper when a note was 
handed to me. The note was on robin's-egg-blue 
paper, and I broke it open languidly, with that lack 
of enthusiasm one shows over notes from friends not 
housekeepers. But it was a very civil note from Mrs. 
Baines to the effect that, on reconsideration, she had 
decided not to accept the situation. 

It was a matinee day, but I flew to the registry 
office with Mrs. Baines' s note in my hands. Yet I 
did not have to show it, for my gem and the blonde 
had evidently got together immediately upon my de- 
parture. The blonde was very condescending: 

"Well, madam, you said you wanted the best and 
I secured the best for you. Yet you asked the best 
to cook tripe." 

''And why shouldn't I?" I roared back. ''The 
French are the finest cooks in the world, and they 
make a delicacy of tripe. The Anglo-Saxons are the 
worst, yet they swoon at the mention of the word." 

But there was nothing more to be said, and no use 

in seeking farther for a servant in return for my 

twenty-two shillings and sixpence. I was the tripe- 

186 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

woman in that office. I had forgotten that it had a 
standard, no matter how false. I was low, and no- 
body would work for me. 

As usual, I flung myself upon the mercies of Mrs. 
"Wren, who was all indignation over the heartlessness 
of women who didn't care for a good home when it 
was offered them. If Mrs. Wren hadn't '^Dadda" 
(Mr. Wren) and little Bit (the young Wren bird) and 
Granny (the great-aunt), she would come to me her- 
self, and look upon it as "a. honor." Having these 
three appurtenances and a small nest to look after, 
she bethought herself of a far-removed cousin who 
was doing the whole work of a house with many stairs 
for the reason that her employer would permit her 
to keep with her her little fatherless child of six. 

The little girl was all she had, but before the war 
she had a husband and ''a little business." Yet he 
had ''joined up," in spite of the excuse of the little 
business and the new baby, and after he was dead the 
business grew smaller and smaller, winked out alto- 
gether, and the mother went out to service. She had 
great difficulty in securing a position, as no one seemed 
to want soldiers' widows and soldiers' orphans to- 
gether, except myself. And she did not find a place 
until she would accept the work ordinarily done by 
two women, yet with the dole of one. 

Mrs. Wren gave up her dinner between the shows 
one day to go to Vauxhall and offer her a home with 
me (but I would not give in an inch. My last words 
were, ''On condition that she will cook tripe"). And 
the widow accepted the place gladly. She was to come 
to the dressing-room to talk it over in a night or two ; 
in the mean time I walked around to the London 

County Council school near by our Chelsea home 

187 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

to see if they would receive so small an infant, and if 
not, would they make an exception for a soldier's 
orphan. One of our American novelists was with me, 
a man of such profound mentality that I had been a 
little worried over his prospective visits at the maison- 
nette for fear I could not talk up to his standard. 

But he found the hired-girl subject as engrossing 
as did I (will probably make a good deal more money 
out of it), was interested in the L. C. C. school, which 
is making fine effort toward manual and domestic- 
science training, and ended the day very pleasantly 
by cutting newspapers into strips and twisting them 
into papers, that we might economize on matches, 
since we could not on cooks. I speak of these homely 
amusements for the benefit of other hostesses who 
may have great writers within their gates. If you 
haven't ideas with which to entertain them, keep on 
hand a set of kindergarten tools or a child's clay- 
modeling outfit; don't talk to them, and they will 
look vaguely back upon the evening as one of keen 
intellectual enjoyment. 

I can recall but one distinguished visitor in our 
small house who seemed to have had a better time 
purely by listening to my conversation. He was an 
Englishman whose name strikes us with a thrill of 
promised pleasure when we see it looking up from a 
table of contents in a magazine; one of those men 
whose minds we Americans have known for years, 
but of whose private life we know nothing at all. 
At least I didn't until he went away. He was 
Beechey's friend, and while she was below-Ltairs, 
licking Gladj^s into a clean apron for tea, he and I 
were amiably discussing the arts and the comparative 
social value of men and women allied to them. Actors 

1.88 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

we dismissed with a wave of the hand, they were too 
impermanent in their homes and their relationships; 
writers we approved of, but put aside as too insist- 
ently brainy for close companionship; and the palm 
for modesty, amiability, and general friendliness went 
to the man who draws and paints. We did not touch 
upon musicians until the others of the heaux arts had 
been reviewed, and I swear the man was just as ready 
as I to assert that their beautiful one-sided intellects 
did not make for peaceful friendships. However, 
elated over my success in holding his attention with- 
out the aid of kindergarten utensils, I grew flippant 
in my disposal of these people who bring more love- 
liness into our humdrum existence than any other of 
God's creatures. 

''They are the lowest form of life," I completed, 
"next to earth-worms." 

This made such a great success with him — for he 
greeted it with roars of laughter, and very few English- 
men laugh at me a great deal — that I could not for- 
bear to repeat to Beechey, upon his departure, my 
little mot. She looked at me mousily. 

''Splendid!" she encouraged. 

"Well, he laughed a great deal." 

"He would. His wife is one of the finest musicians 
in Europe." 

I shall continue to read that man's stories with 
pleasure, but I shall always feel that he has wrenched 
the plot from some confiding stranger whom he has 
charmed by his close attention into abandoned 
revelations. 

To work back to Mrs. Wren's cousin: she called 
at the dressing-room according to arrangement, her 
kind mother's face beaming over being wanted, yet 

189 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

honestly confessing that she had been prevailed upon 
to remain. The lady for whom she worked had used 
an adroit argument to keep her on. She had not offered 
her more money or less work, but she claimed she 
was too devoted to the child to let her go. ''She likes 
'er; she likes 'er," reiterated the mother, and went 
back to climbing stairs with scuttles of coal, cooking 
and serving dinner-parties, and pressing out morning 
gowns at midnight. 

I might have burst into a declaration of love for 
the little girl, whom I had never seen, as a counterfoil 
and delicately insinuated that I would mention her 
in my will, but that the American novelist had stopped 
making tapers long enough to examine the rooms I 
was offering a mother and a child of six, and had 
agreed with me that it was a poor place for developing 
the growth of anything beyond the sprouting of 
onions. 

My American friend — for friend he became — was a 
real Socialist, not a parlor one, and occasionally went 
to the basements of life to see how things actually 
were. There are a great many Socialists in the world, 
and the ablest minds now lean toward a tender con- 
cern in the plain people. Yet I do not find among 
the men who write of these things any great practical 
demonstration of the theories which they so ably 
exploit in print. They like good food and good ser- 
vice, and are impatient if it is not good. The subject 
may be too vast to admit of individual treatment, yet 
it seems to my raw. Middle- West understanding, if 
the individual looked after the rights of the little 
people about him, that it would be more direct than 
disposing of the subject en bloc, and the result would 
be more immediate. 

190 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

We dined delightfully one Sunday night in a very 
wanii house whose hostess was, it goes without say- 
ing, an American, albeit an expatriate, and the sub- 
ject turned upon the housing problem. There is a 
growing belief throughout the world, at present, that 
a large family should occupy more than two rooms, 
but to my surprise those most inimical to the effort 
that night at table were a man and woman whose 
names are known to the literary world for great 
daring and advanced thought. All they advanced that 
night were archaic ideas. The woman novelist con- 
tended that the poor didn't want but two rooms; 
if they had more than that, they took in lodgers. 
They simply didn't like better conditions. 

''But don't you see," I broke out, in my anxious 
American voice, "we would still be at the Stone Age 
if all of us had remained content? Some one must 
forge ahead, find himself more comfortable, and gen- 
erously endeavor to make others more comfortable. 
The weaker must be shaped by the stronger. If the 
strong won't do it — like yourselves — who will?" 

There was a gloomy silence, and I saw that I was 
too much in earnest, which is trying to a Sunday-night 
dinner- table; but the lady novehst lightened up the 
talk a bit by declaring that she would greatly enjoy 
a return to the Stone Age, for then she might meet 
the original caveman. She had always wanted to 
be pulled by the hair. I forbore to remind her that, 
from all accounts, he would be a good deal like her 
present husband, and my distress was alleviated by 
the aristocrat of the party, whom my hostess had 
apologized for in advance as possibly a dull dinner 
companion. 

He was what we call a ''haw-haw Enghshman/' 

191 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

but he had estates in the north country, where the 
housing situation is acute, and he said very bluntly, 
without any haw-haw at all, that he was trying hard 
to get his people into larger houses. He didn't be- 
lieve in brothers and sisters sleeping in the same 
room, and in a few years — after he was gone, no doubt 
— the tenant wouldn't believe in it either. We were 
all pretty much the same under the skin, he went on, 
yes, even the skins were the same. And since his 
epidermis had learned to feel better after a morning 
bath, he was sure that his tenants would; it wasn't 
so very long ago that we first acknowledged the need 
of tooth-paste, but a man's teeth felt rather grimy 
without the article, these days, and teeth were the 
same the world over. What was a luxury soon be- 
came a necessity, and the laborer would feel that way 
about all the innovations which at present he was 
resisting. 

It was quite a long speech, for the type of English- 
man that, along with the clergy, we always laugh at 
on the stage; but it did me a great deal of good, for 
here was a man whose forefathers had been barons 
and who may have used the whip on their varlets, yet 
he had wriggled off the ugly skin of convention that 
still tightly binds so many souls. The hostess took 
up the thread at this moment, and said that tooth- 
paste was not only a necessity, but an article for 
measuring the passing of time. The last guest staying 
in her home had said that she would remain for the 
duration of a tube of paste; she found that two tubes 
was always too long, and half a tube not long enough. 
Then, if I remember rightly, the soldier in the party 
outlined vast possibilities of a host arising in the 
dead of night to squeeze the tooth-paste of a guest 

192 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

whose economy presaged a long visit. And so we 
went on with prattles — all avoiding the war like mad. 

Possibly the real reason for the absence of war- 
talk was given to me by one of our American airmen, 
whose work has been with the British, and who has an 
unabounded affection for them. ''The soldier doesn't 
talk about the war," he said, "because he isn't in- 
terested in it. The English soldier, I mean. We will 
be chewing the rag about it forever in America. The 
British are a fighting people. It's their tradition. 
It's an incident with them, a hideous incident which 
they are ready to forget." 

As Beechey and I walked back that night, slippers 
pattering along on icy pavements, with the hope of 
a taxi at every corner teasing us on, we agreed that 
there might be something in this. And if so, it is 
quite possible that we in America, an agrarian people 
— or a commercial one, if you choose — found the war 
much more horrible than did our allies. I don't mean 
our participation in it, but the eternal consciousness 
that it was going on. And since it was horrible to us, 
it may not have been entirely apathy which prevented 
us from hurling ourselves into it at an earlier period. 

A comfortable conclusion, at any rate, although I 
should not care to advance it at a London dinner- 
party. They would probably not do anything but 
look at me, but the more the English look the more 
I wonder what is going on back of their amiably 
inclined countenances. Something is going on back 
of my face all the time, things I would never give 
expression to, although, as a matter of fact, if the 
English could see back of it they would find an emo- 
tional fondness growing ever stronger the longer I 

am among them and witness the phlegm with which 

193 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

they accept their financial distresses and labor up- 
heavals. But, since it is emotional, I know it would 
embarrass them if I converted my fondness into 
speech, so I go on living a restrained, double-faced 
existence. 

They would find also a great desire on my part to 
be liked — that is, for my country to be liked. The 
individual they accept over here for what he brings 
to them, no matter his country. No one has written 
a better book on Abraham Lincoln than an English- 
man, no one a more comprehensive history of the 
American commonwealth than a Briton. Is it be- 
cause we are new that an older civilization en masse 
cannot be entirely in sympathy with us? Must they 
necessarily, from the fact that they are ancient, limit 
their admiration to what is not foreign to them? 
''I prefer the New Zealanders to the other colonials," 
said a splendid British girl who has been doing hos- 
pital work throughout the war; "they are more hke 
the English." Why could she not have preferred the 
Aussies or the Canadians because they were different? 

I felt very lonely coming away from these parties 
where every one had been so agreeable to me. I was 
new and green and an outsider. Perhaps all new 
peoples feel that way, and I alone confess it. I would 
determine that I would find an English friend, a 
close, intimate friend, that I could tell my secrets to 
and who would tell me hers. Mrs. Wren was my 
greatest encouragement. The longer she was with 
me the more she was growing to like us, she confessed. 
She said we were a revelation to her! Now Mrs. 
Wren stands for the core of England. Her people 
have farmed in one district for countless generations. 
They pay rent to an earl, of whom they are very 

194 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

much ashamed. They wouldn't have him on their 
place! Indeed, he has no chance to get on it, as his 
creditors collect the rent every year — ''yur" Mrs. 
Wren pronounced it, with an accent that only Eden 
Phillpotts can write down. 

Mrs. Wren, in time, thawed to me because I thawed 
to her. I can hear you say, ''Of course, if you make a 
confidante of a dresser. ..." But the point is, she 
didn't despise us the better she knew us, and she 
didn't like us because we were the same, but because 
we were different. I had to work, however, for Mrs. 
Wren's confidence, and it has occurred to me that we 
newer nations do not work very hard to make our- 
selves liked or understood. Some of our complacent 
ones may argue that it is not worth working for, 
but it seems to me that the good opinion of the world 
is not to be despised, and 'way down in the hearts 
of all of us we do want to be loved. 

"Comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love," 
said Solomon, but I know now that he meant sick 
with love. Solomon was too wise ever to be sick of it. 
Yes, every nation wants to be loved, and mere eating 
apples, mere going on being successful financially 
cannot take the place of the regard of other nations. 
I am afraid America will have to "make up" to the 
older peoples. We will have to go more than half- 
way. The colonials come bouncing up to meet us, 
but they are not bound by the cords of a thousand 
years' conservatism. The English may think us 
rather ridiculous if they should observe us lumbering 
over obstacles with their esteem as a goal, but the 
more I see of England the more I think it is worth 
the bruising of the body — yes, and of the spirit — to 

reach the winning-post. 

195 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

But here I am at the end of another chapter not 
only disposing of the affairs of the British, but out- 
Hning the possible future conduct of the Americans, 
and I began with tripe and what it taught of the 
feudal system. Yet tripe and the subject in hand are 
analogous. If I could overcome the prejudice against 
tripe, why can't the United States as a nation over- 
come any petty lack of understanding between the 
Old World and the New? By hard work I grappled 
successfully with the house-heating opposition party; 
I beat the early attacks upon the door-knocker into 
acceptance, and by resistance introduced offal into 
my household, yet still remained the lady. 

Mrs. Hacking, our new housekeeper, entered iden- 
tically with the abasing dish. She could, would, and 
did cook tripe. 



Chapter XIII 

ONE observes that the new housekeeper, Mrs. 
Hacking, embodies Chapter Thirteen. Now 
that I look back upon it, Mrs. Hacking was 
thirteen in my London experience, and while "ex- 
perience is the name we give to our mistakes," we 
often find our errors to be exceedingly interesting 
episodes, as, indeed, I found Mrs. Hacking. 

She was sent in at the close of our early dinner, 
from a twelve-shilling registry in the neighborhood. 
That is, it would cost but twelve shillings to secure 
Mrs. Hacking, and, as the registry lady suggested, 
cheap at the price. The split fee was represented by 
this highly recommended working housekeeper, for 
she was going to cut everything in two. I did not 
stipulate at the moment of talking her over in the 
damp little office with the agent (who dropped her 
"h's, " then added them on again with vehemence) 
what was to become of the other half of the bills that 
were to be cut in two — whether it was to go to me or 
to Mrs. Hacking. The assumption was that it would 
go to me, for the new housekeeper came of good people 
in the neighborhood, tradesmen in a small way, and 
therefore Mrs. Hacking was respectable. When we 
are called respectable in America we are honest and 
moral. Over here the Mrs. Hackings are respectable 
when they keep their heads up, and do not sing in 
the streets on the way home from parties. Also, I 

197 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

think, they must go in a saloon bar, not a public bar, 
when they want a drink. 

We were immediately inclined toward Mrs. Hack- 
ing, and wished to rush her into service the next day, 
but restrained ourselves and expressed a willingness 
to begin at the beginning of the week, as respectable 
people should. We had been endeavoring to con- 
sume a ''sweet," as Mrs. Hacking called, which 
Gladys had made all by herself. Beechey had con- 
tended that if the girl was left alone she might ''take 
the initiative." She had. The sweet consisted of 
dough, lemon, and salt, and the contempt with which 
Mrs. Hacking viewed it as she stood by our dinner- 
table promised better sweets, even sweet sweets, if 
she came into our service. 

Besides this, she was a soldier's widow. Now, though 
we are opposed to death, a soldier's widow is more 
welcome than a soldier's daughter. There is no re- 
sisting a widow, especially in shabby crape, with a 
tear in her eye which she bravely refused to shed. 
Even if Gladys had arranged for the killing off of her 
father, I doubt if we would have entertained her any 
longer. For the new applicant possessed, along with 
this attribute, a capability that was relieving. She 
knew how to market, run a house, cook, and serve. 
She volunteered that she would wash up little things 
like handkerchiefs and fine linen, and I was not to 
worry about "nothink." She wanted a pound a week 
for all this, and "will serve you faithfully, madam." 
She did not say "moddam," but I had given that up 
long ago. Her very last words at the door were com- 
forting ones. She said she had plenty of aprons of 
her own, would sleep in her father's house as that 
would save me bed linen, and knew three ways of 

198 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

cooking tripe. I reeled down to the theater and re- 
ported to Mrs. Wren, who was as happy as I. She 
was happier, for I didn't tell Mrs. Wren that there 
was a fly in the ointment. Strictly speaking, it was 
not a fly or an ointment. It was the mouth of Mrs. 
Hacking. Subtly, very subtly, it gave me a warning. 

Without in any way referring to this warning, 
which I was refusing to take, I talked with the littlest 
girl that night of the way the Creator has of making 
features so that they display the sinister character- 
istics of the soul. I remarked how hard it was that 
the woman with a mean little mouth, or the man 
with no lobe to his ears, or the child with the evasive 
eyes, must be shunned by mankind, when the un- 
fortunate possessors had nothing whatever to do with 
the making of mouths and ears and eyes, or the bad 
spirits within. 

The littlest girl, who has so much wisdom that I 
don't see where she stores it, replied that those creat- 
ures are unfortunate, but, since the laws of life are 
for the masses, she supposed God protects His people 
as well as He can against the subnormal or the ab- 
normal by reflecting in the outward formation the 
moral structure within. She thought the most un- 
fortunate people of all were those who couldn't 
recognize these little danger-flags, and went on en- 
tangling their lives in misspent relationships; also 
those — ■ She didn't get any farther, as her cue came, 
and she dashed on the stage in an immoral evening 
wrap, laughing lightly as one always does when late 
for a cue. 

But I knew what she meant, and I was glad she 
entered the scene when she did, for she certainly 
would have continued the subject, as she was very 

14 199 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

thorough, to the point of anathematizing those human 
beings who are good pickers in life, yet pick frivol- 
ously even so. Now I have but two gifts in lite. I 
can tell whether the actor is good, or the part he is 
playing is good, and I can read character as I can read 
"Will the cat catch the rat?" It is none of my own 
accomplishing. Lacking a silver spoon to be born 
with, my fairy godmother skirmished around for this 
gift of protection. I am glad I have it, and I would 
be gladder if I would heed it, but the maisonnette 
was so in need of immediate care that I turned down 
the flag, as the taxi-driver does nowadays when he 
sees me anxiously approaching him. I didn't heed it, 
yet I knew that Mrs. Hacking was mealy-mouthed. 

It was the very next morning that a note was 
brought in to my bedside, a very civil note such as 
Mrs. Baines would have written, but this time it 
was Mrs. Hacking, to the efTect that upon reconsid- 
eration she did not think it wise to come to me. 
Gladys brought in the message, as she had brought 
my discharge from the service of Mrs. Baines, and it 
passed through my mind that she might write these 
things herself so that she could remain in a pennant 
room and go to as many dances as she liked. 

Sympathy for Gladys had long since disappeared. 
She was spending her wages on extra jazz steps, she 
had a very good fur coat, and had loaned a diamond 
ring to a gentleman to wear on a visit to Scotland. 
I knew this, as she asked me if I could think of any 
good way of getting it back. And this exhibition of 
naivete alone would preclude any scheme involving 
the use of a part of her body held in restraint by her 
black-velvet fillet. 

We were always dismissing Gladys, then suggesting 

2U0 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

that she stay on a little longer. At first she used to 
pack her box, but at the Mrs. Hacking episode she 
made no effort to dismantle her apartment — ''The 
boy cried, 'Wolf! Wolf!' and there was no wolf." 
Yet I did not ask her to remain upon the reception 
of this letter. I carried the oil stove over to my 
typewriter and, thawing out rapidly, sent a note to 
Mrs. Hacking raising her wages to five-and-twenty 
shillings a week, on condition she had no objections 
to tripe. By nightfall the reply came that — on recon- 
sideration — once more — she found she could accept 
the position. And I tried not to think of her mealy 
mouth, but of the tremendous resourcefulness of a 
woman who could "up" me like that. 

Beechey was sympathetic over Mrs. Hacking's 
case. She said soldiers' widows frequently had terrible 
obligations: crape was dear — all that expense of get- 
ting a pension — and the high cost of selling the piano 
— and she knew it would make for happiness in the 
home to be doing the right thing by one who had 
suffered in the war. I suppose she meant by that 
Mrs. Hacking's happiness. Yet I saw a mean little 
advantage in paying the extra five shillings. Like 
Simon Legree, I could say to Mrs. Hacking, "Now 
you belong to me." And while Uncle Tom — I mean 
Mrs. Hacking — might reply, "No, massa, mah body 
may belong to you, but mah soul belongs to Gawd," 
I could then respond that her material forces were all 
I wanted. And Simon Legree could have said it, too, 
if he had only been clever enough, thus turning the 
tables on Uncle Tom and giving the play a different 
ending. I was not going to overwork Mrs. Hacking 
physically, but for those extra five shillings I was 
going to be an unhampered American, saying what I 

201 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

pleased, eating what I pleased, and indulging in all 
the vagaries of my race. My instinct — the same in- 
stinct that had whispered ''mealy-mouthed"- — told 
me that Mrs. Hacking would stick it for the extra pay. 

I began on the morning of her arrival. Gladys, by 
the present of several extra shillings, had been per- 
suaded to leave. She accepted the gift, but it was 
characteristic of this Canadian girl that she left three 
halfpence which she owed me on the kitchen-table, 
along with the dirty dinner-dishes. It was not thiev- 
ing, according to her training, to leave the dishes, 
but money she would not steal. And I did have a 
pang of concern upon her departure, for I don't know 
what is going to become of that girl — of girls like her. 
In a bm'st of confidence we learned from her that 
she was not only one soldier's daughter, but the daugh- 
ter of two soldiers. Her father had, in some easy 
fashion, married a Birmingham ''trollop" (I quote the 
stepdaughter), since entering the war, which had so 
enraged the mother that she, in turn, had married a 
"limey," which is the American doughboy's name for 
the lime-drinking Tommy, and the father — the first 
father — was not going to take any of them back 
to Canada — ever. 

She was not despondent, however, and refused to 
enter the school for domestic science, where we were 
willing to place her, as she also expected to make a 
marriage — or two — no doubt hoping to begin with 
the gentleman who had taken her diamond ring to 
see the sights in Scotland. I was glad to be quit of 
her. But — I find myself still watching for her anx- 
iously when I go down the Strand, yet praying that 
I will not see her prowling there — the terrible aftcr- 
iiiatli of the war. 

202 



iVN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

W^iile I have said that Mrs. Hacking came in with 
the tripe, I was wrong, as the tripe I had already 
soaking for the luncheon dish. Mrs. Hacking came 
in with a ton of coal. She came in and the coal 
remained outside for further orders. Both were wel- 
come. I had been buying scuttles from my landladj'-, 
and the coal cellar was at the moment as empty as 
the kitchen. The new housekeeper did exactly what 
I would have asked of her. She drew back the cur- 
tains to the window wdth a fine clash of brass rings, 
and advanced to my bedside. 

''Good morning, madam. The coal-man is here. 
What shall I do for him, madam?" 

I then applied the acid test to Mrs. Hacking. "Kiss 
him," was my order. 

She smiled — it was all right— she smiled. ''They 
are welcome, aren't they, madam?" And without 
kissing him, Mrs. Hacking saw that the coal was 
properly disposed. She brought in my coffee and toast, 
beautifully brown and hot and buttered. She came 
in later, in a white apron, and laid the fire. She ap- 
proved of the fire-lighter. She liked inventions. Her 
brother was an inventor. He was inventing a geyser 
— she paused— the invention cost money. She went 
out, yet I was too at ease with the revivifying effect 
of Mrs. Hacking's brisk capability to observe that she 
was hitching me up somehow or other with the in- 
vention — that she was inventing something herself. 

Perhaps every woman does not suffer the fatigue 
that comes to me when in continual association with 
the inept in life. If I were more able myself, I could 
possibly better withstand this strain on my spinal 
column. It is a very physical thing with me, re- 
solving itself into a backache that does not come from 

. 203 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

any material burden. And I must confess that, from 
the arrival of Mrs. Hacking until her — my departure, 
there was an easing of the loads 1 seemed to be carry- 
ing. The load of playing an emotional role, the load 
of writing (or the business of endless observing, that 
one may write), the load of talking to strangers, of 
striving for English friendships, and all the little 
packets we carry as we make our pilgrim's progress 
through the world. To revert to American slang, 
whatever hideous shortcomings Mrs. Hacking pos- 
sessed, I must ''hand it" to her for an able brain that, 
among its busy machinations, employed itself, as well, 
in keeping me comfortable. 

What perplexes me about the Mrs. Hackings of 
life is the application of their excellent minds to dis- 
honest gains, when they could realize greater benefits 
by playing straight. A man with an amazing head 
for figures avoids the many businesses where his 
talent would make him valuable, preferring the pre- 
carious living of a gambler. One with the gift of 
expression talks witless widows into empty schemes 
for investing money, when the same adherence to one 
good scheme would jdeld him a better return. A 
woman with a sense of organization often flits from 
one shady enterprise to another, and frequently ends 
in the courts. I am sure that sums accrued from the 
begging letters which come to our stage-door would be 
greater if the time spent writing them was applied 
to an honest industry. Particularly in London the 
actor is subjected to long, carefully written appeals, 
and as these letters go to many stage-doors, and hun- 
dreds of actors, I doubt whether the response covers 
the postage. Perhaps it is a kink in their brains that 
is not of their own twisting — part of the abnormality 

204 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

of life which, if it predominated, would become the 
normal. 

Personally, I am glad it is not normal, for I should 
then be one of the twisted ones, working dully for a 
living, with all my earnings going rightly to the Mrs. 
Hackings. Four pounds of my money went over to 
Mrs. Hacking before the first week was out, in response 
to a letter under my coffee-pot on my inunaculate 
breakfast tray. But who could withstand: 

Dear Madam, — I hope sincerely you will forgive the asking — 
your not knowing me very long — but I wanted to know if you 
could advance some of my wages, and stop it, say, ten shillings or 
fifteen shillings a week. I am in need of some many little things 
which cost quite a lot when you sum them up. My boots will 
take all this week's money. I was silly to lend my brother all 
my little capital for his invention, because I have now to wait for 
it, and I find that with a few lbs I could do so much better than 
getting them week by week. You do not do so well. And I feel 
happy with you and will do my best to make you a good servant. 
I hope you will excuse the liberty. 

A. Hacking. 

Had I possessed any of those qualities with which 
the kinky-minded ones are endowed, I might speedily 
have recognized that Mrs. Hacking was satisfied with 
her place and washed to secure it by an advance. 
I would have seen clearly that I would be obliged to 
keep her on, in order to get my money back, no mat- 
ter how she behaved. I would have known without 
any further flagging of danger-signals that a mealy- 
mouthed one who had so read my character as to 
have struck for a raise in wages before her wages began, 
and now begged for a larger sum to insure those 
wages, would not cease to manipulate further the 
contents of my purse. 

205 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

But I saw none of these things, for I am of those 
indolent minds, of those weak ones who, once warmed 
and fed and clean, will suffer no abrasion of that life 
by the introduction of stern principles. I am not 
sure but that we are the most dangerous of all to a 
society already suffering from tolerance. Indolently 
I gave Mrs. Hacking the four pounds, pretending to 
myself that this was good business for me. I had now 
even a greater hold on her, something, of course, that 
she had not taken into consideration. She would be 
obliged to stay on to work out the loan! 

After all, she was worth it, for of what would my 
thirteenth chapter consist if otherwise? Then there 
were the purely English dinners, and my pride as 
she would serve the guests the sauces: "Sage and 
onions, sir? Sage and onions, madam?" Then the 
moment, breathless to all of us, before the savory 
came up, after we had consumed our sweet. The 
guesses we would adventure. Sometimes it was a 
dish of Jerusalem artichokes, sometimes macaroni 
with cheese; once— but at this I balked — Irish pota- 
toes. Only, they do not have Irish potatoes over here, 
or sweet potatoes; they are white — or yams. The 
Creator who made Englishmen alone knows the full, 
deep meaning of the savory, yet I dare to ask the same 
question of Savarin, who introduced in the middle of 
a meal the stomach-chilling punch. 

As a method of protection I opened accounts with 
the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker, and 
Mrs. Hacking paid the bills weekly. She also was 
allowed what she called petty cash for sundrj'- small 
expenditures. It began petty, but it grew rapidly, 
yet every week a perfectly balanced ledger, with all 
the expenditure set down, was handed to me for my 

20G 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

inspection. Sometimes she would need extra money, 
for she would go over to Battersea to buy the joint, 
the news getting around that pork was unusually 
good over there, if — judging by the price Mrs. Hack- 
ing paid — exceptionally dear. But Mrs. Hacking 
really went to Battersea for me, she always did want 
me to have the best — and herself the best of that. 
It was the cutting-in-two business again. 

In this skirmishing for good cuts in food and drink 
of all kinds it was curious how one district would have 
an amplitude of one commodity, and another part of 
London be entirely without it. We had money 
stored up as the squirrel stores nuts, at various 
grocers', actual money ahead of other people's cash, 
that we might be given a preference for a bit of cheese. 
Yet Mrs. Wren could frequently secure cheese at 
Camden Town. It was so with firewood. Kensing- 
ton had firewood, Clapham had none. Kensington 
had all the logs, hawked about exclusively in their 
streets by men still in uniform, their wagons pulled 
by little mokes. These donkeys were the first pur- 
chase upon the owner's demobilization. It was the 
soldier's initial effort to do for himself, after the 
country had done for him for four years. 

At our recruiting-stations in the United States we 
display a placard which once gave me a thrill when 
I read it in passing. It is among the inducements for 
going into the army. "Trains the mind to disciplined 
decision," urges the placard. 

And yet — one could see in the eyes of the young 
log-vender who had set up in business with this pur- 
chase of a donkey and cart an enormous lack of dis- 
trust over his enterprise — over his judgment. He 

was on his own, foraging for his own food, clothing 

§07 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

himself, choosing his own itinerary for the day, after 
four years' feeding, clothing, and entire compliance 
with the will of his superior officer. There was no 
question then as to whether he was to right-wheel 
or left-wheel, right-about-face or break-ranks. Now, 
when he and his little cart would come to the cross- 
ing of streets, he would hesitate, and sometimes, 
hesitating, would be lost. Then he would break- 
ranks, light a pipe, and sit down on the curbstone. 

One reads in the papers of the palming off of dying 
beasts on these poor boys investing their savings in 
this manner, but it is as impossible to realize this 
type of swindler as it is to conjure up which member 
of one's club is a thief. I believe there is said to be 
no club without a thief. England seems to be divided 
into two classes at present: those who are expending 
every fiber of their being for the welfare of the de- 
mobilized man, and those who are as set upon de- 
stroying him. The problem of finding jobs for all 
is not yet acute, and the passer-by is spared the sad 
derelicts that draped themselves upon the Embank- 
ment and park benches a decade ago. And this is 
so hopeful a sign that a stranger feels the man who 
is wearing out his body to help these disbanded men 
at this crucial stage has, at least, found ease for his 
soul. 

It is said that during the war these pallid, underfed, 
or gin-soaked creatures did not exist at all, going to 
prove the contention of the littlest girl that a human 
being will work rather than go hungry, if the job is 
offered to him. After generations of underfeeding, 
men and women lack the initiative to look for work, 
and this harks back to the question as to the real 
effect four years of army service will have upon the 

208 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

young men starting out in a little business. Dis- 
ciplined decision? He will be disciplined, but what 
has been his training for decision? I ask the question 
humbly — I don't know. 

It may be that the opportunities for the consump- 
tion of spirits so lessened that the derelicts on the 
benches took food instead of drink, and found them- 
selves no longer derelicts. The mere business of 
moving about in the search for gin nowadays creates 
a vigor which is opposed to the hulk wdth barnacled 
sides. I could never have been a derelict in London, 
for in the effort to acquire a modest cellar both Mrs. 
Hacking and myself were continually on the move. 
I suppose my activities to acquire liquors of any sort 
for visitors to our maisonnette will be read but lan- 
guidly by my country-people at present— a poor 
striving as compared to their stealthy burying in 
back yards enough spirits to span one little life. 

This pursuit of a bottle in England seems to be the 
final reversal of the glass — in more ways than one. 
When a crowd collects in a London street to watch a 
mildly intoxicated man, to watch him with admiration 
and respect, to watch him with bitterness, you feel 
that almost anything can happen now. And when 
Mrs. Wren, who has been searching for a bottle of 
Scotch for me, comes hurrying up the steps to an- 
nounce, in a glad voice, that she cannot get the 
whisky, but has "heard of a bottle of gin in High- 
gate," you fall down on your knees and pray, for the 
world is over. 

One may think that this has nothing to do with 
Mrs. Hacking, whom I left buying pork at Battersea, 
but she is across every page. For Mrs. Hacking, with 
Gladys, with the demobbed man and the donkey, are 

209 



AN AMERICANOS LONDON 

the offsprings of the war who may some clay become 
the derelicts of future time. Not due to lack of work, 
but to the war itself. ]t was not significant to me at 
first that Mrs. Hacking marketed generally at the 
noon hour, and if there was no marketing to do she 
would go out when the clock struck twelve to change 
a shilling into pence for the gas-meter at the corner 
pub. I had pennies, but my housekeeper did not 
like to disturb me. Sometimes she came back with 
a headache, but she always served me decently, 
although maddening the landlady by taking a hot 
bath in company with the geyser in the afternoon. 
By the dinner hour she was quite all right again, 
going out at six-thirty for more pennies sometimes, 
but staying far into the evening that she might leave 
her kitchen clean or prepare a dish for my late supper. 

She seldom went about at night, although her 
brother the inventor would urge her not to grouse 
and would occasionally take her to the Town Hall. 
She told me once that it was a soiree at the Town Hall, 
a regular one, as several songs were sung. Yet it 
was the night of one of these soirees that her purse 
was stolen, containing two pounds of my money and 
her own wages. She told me this immediately on 
bringing up the morning coffee, her true-blue eyes, 
the kind you read about, looking at me squarely. 
She had been grizzling all night over it, she said, as 
she would ''arsk herself 'ow she was going to pay her 
lady back." Her brother the inventor had not de- 
rived any profits from his geysers yet, and "indeed, 
madam, you carn't blame me for grizzling; husband 
gone, piano gone, mangle gone, and now your money." 

I did not blame her for grizzhng. What surprised 
me was that I did not grizzle myself. Grizzle over the 

210 



AN AIMERICAN'S LONDON 

perfidy of Mrs. Hacking. Nor did I grouse when I 
certainly had occasion for being anno3^ed over her 
carelessness at the soiree — all of it going to prove that 
3^ou cannot be too careful among singers. I feared- 
it came to me now — that Mrs. Hacking might be an 
inventor of greater profit to herself than her brother 
would ever be. In Mrs. Hacking's case I was the 
geyser from which money was to be made. But at 
that I rose from my bed to look over her accounts, 
with never a nine shillings substituted for ninepence 
worth of cocoa; and I upbraided myself for my 
suspicions. 

Or was it "the advent of spring," as the clerk 
trying on my shoes very elegantly expressed it, which 
rendered me lax? For, by the 1st of April, we had 
been unmistakably apprised that there would be 
a spring. A spring which just showed itself by an 
appearance of buds in low, sheltered bushes in the 
square, yet, upon close examination, there was no 
bud whatever, just a swelling of the twigs. Then there 
was that wonderful but chilly morning when the oil 
stove and myself, upon making our little promenade 
to meet the bath-tub, did not immediately close the 
door giving upon the garden, for, peeping in, was a 
waving branch of a bush climbed from over the 
neighbor's brick wall, and strung along it were palest 
green buds, like jade beads on a fairy wand. 

Two days after that I saw, but did not see — saw, 
but did not see — a red furriness softening the stark 
branches of trees in distant squares. But not the trees 
in our park — not those wise old plane fellows. No, 
not for Easter would they put on new clothes. You 
couldn't tell them anything about an English spring. 
Let the young ones rush into fresh garments, counting 

211 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

hopefully on the softening influence their eager young 
green would have upon the weather, the plane-trees 
would remain within themselves until May. For the 
wind is not tempered to the young shoot on this 
island, and this harsh opposition of the elements is 
the only reason I would not ask for every spring in 
England. 

Here the green things come out before the rains 
have ceased to chill. Sniff as I might, I could get 
no scent of the earth sending up its heart-stirring 
fragrance after the first warm rain such as we have at 
home. Every obstacle is placed in the way of the 
development of the year, but, against the cold re- 
buffs, re-creation battles on. And I think this sturdy 
growth in spite of the bitter winds stands more per- 
fectly for the English people than any other simile 
that comes to my mind. It is time to smile, they do 
smile. It is time to be gay, they are gay. The lip 
must be kept stiffened, it is kept stiffened. They 
flourish in spite of the oppressions of mean social 
conditions and cruel economic complications. They 
have got into the swing of the English seasons. They 
are the English seasons. 

Since God created the spring. He surely must allow 
each mortal one springtime indiscretion, and does not 
enter it against him in His judgment-book. It may 
be a hat, a lover, or a Spanish chair. It may be 
stealing other people's crocuses, or running away 
from school. It may be, as in my case it was, the con- 
tinuation of Mrs. Hacking, that I might grapple no 
further with servants and enjoy every opening daf- 
fodil in Hyde Park, every lilac in our little square. 

It was probably a particularly foolish indiscretion. 
As I write now, knowing that I should be landing 

212 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

Mrs. Hacking behind the bars instead of likening her 
to a springtime kicking-up of the heels, I can hear the 
judge on the bench — with me in the witness-box and 
Mrs. Hacking in the dock— asking me what caused 
me to retain the woman Hacking's services when I 
had become suspicious of her. And I could hear my 
reply, and how I would be asked immediately to 
step down. For I would have embarrassed the judge 
by suddenly ejaculating, after the manner of a gym- 
nastic teacher: 

''Spring, your lordship, spring!" 




Chapter XIV 

'ITH the spring came processions. Always 
on matinee days, of course, and generally 
cutting me off from the theater. The first, 
if I remember rightly, was the marching of the Guards 
in honor of their return and in honor of those that did 
not return. It was whispered by the journalists that 
they were being paraded through the city as an evi- 
dence of their strength if they were needed to oppose 
policemen itching to strike, and Labor deciding every 
Sunday in Hyde Park to labor no more, then going 
out on Monday morning with the dinner-pail, per 
usual. There w^ere mutterings that machine-guns 
were planted over the city in all sorts of unsuspected 
places, for the use of those Guards. Ugly rumor was 
rife in England, and why anything as unwelcome, ill 
favored, and untruthful as rumor should be a lady I 
don't know. Was it as gallant a gentleman as Shake- 
speare who first called rumor a dame? 

If the Guards were hurried out as a menace to the 
public, the public was perfectly delighted with this 
demonstration against it, brought its breakfast and 
lunch and sat on the curbstone to cheer the King's 
men as they passed. Only — the English do not cheer 
much; that is, I did not think the3'' cheered much until 
— but if I complete this part I will reach the conclusion 
of the whole matter. Everything from now on would 
be an anticlimax, and the only way to get any dra- 

214 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

matic value out of my writings would be for tlie reader 
to start at the end and work forward. Fancy reading : 
''End the is so and" — it makes even less sense than 
my regular way! 

But as time went on, and all matinee days seemed 
to be given over to processions welcoming various 
home and colonial troops, as hundreds of thousands 
of men marched through the streets, it got into my 
twisted intellect that it was a rather absurd form of 
entertainment. For four years troops have been 
hiking wherever their country sent them. They've 
marched and counter-marched, and bled at the feet 
and shoulders, broken down their arches and broken 
down their hearts. They must be almightily tired of 
tramping. Why don't we have the troops sit on the 
curbstone and in the High Places, and let us march 
past them? How many of us would turn out, I 
wonder, and how often? And oh — ^most deplorable 
thought of all — how many of the soldiers would come 
to see us march? 

When one is in the parade area of London one would 
think that the rest of the city was empty, but upon 
going into these unaffected districts the passers-by 
upon the street are as many as ever, and trade is 
untouched by a million or more of citizens gathered 
along the line of march. Since Chelsea was not astir 
on that day of the first great procession, I foolishly 
took a mild, well-behaved No. 11 bus that looked 
as though it would not lose its head in a crowd, but 
get me safely down to the matinee with that respect 
for Art which a Chelsea bus should have. We would 
follow along the line of march after the troops had 
gone over it, I cleverly planned, and in that way I 
would not be held up. 

15 215 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

I admit I was a little late eating my luncheon, as 

I had been taking a lesson from Mrs. Hacking, in 
the absence of the landlady and the Pomeranians, 
on the meaning of the various knocks on the knocker. 
Mrs. Hacking would stand outside the door and say 
to me, inside, ''I am the post." Then there would 
be one large knock and a small echo following; or 
she would say, ''I am a tradesman," accompanying 
this by a single loud dropping of the iron. She went 
through them all, post, telegraph, tradespeople, and 
ladies, and enjoyed being a lady most, when she would 
rat-a-tat-tat indefinitely. 

It seemed very easy, but when I went outside the 
door and called in to Mrs. Hacking, ''I am a lady," 
Mrs. Hacking would call back I was the telegraph- 
boy; and when I had a letter for her, she claimed I 
had brought only a potato. I don't think any one 
can really perform on the knocker except a Britisher 
or a Spanish dancer skilled in castanets. We had a 
great deal of fun over it, creating the usual London 
crowd that springs up from between the cracks of the 
pavement, and Mrs. Hacking, who was rather weary 
of the austerity of the Square, said that no one could 
gather a crowd in that locality but . an American. 
Still, she was not disapproving. She had concluded 
the lesson by admitting that I was "sl darling to work 
for, in spite of my American ways." And while that 
reminded me she would never have had four pounds 
advance had I not been a wayward American, it also 
reminded me that neither of us was working, and 
luncheon was hastened on — and down. 

Ten minutes after I had gone riding off in the No. 

II bus it began behaving remarkably. I knew the 
route of this 11 bus, and took it sometimes in pref- 

216 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

erence to the more aristocratic section through which 
19 and 22 made their way. I always looked for the 
encouraging sign of an undertaker along this route 
which read, ^^ Funerals with reform," and I would 
plan my own funeral until tears of pity for myself 
would run down my cheeks. I don't know what the 
undertaker meant by it, but I think the last thing 
England will accomplish will be the reformation of 
funerals. Weeps will be hired, and crape, and there 
will be a drop of something afterward, but there is 
a certain canniness in holding off reforming until 
your funeral; it is done with the last gasp generally, 
or what is supposed to be the last gasp, and if it doesn't 
turn out to be one's last, it is very awkward getting 
back to your old ways, with all the family reminding 
you of your spiritual change. Having a funeral with 
reform is like one of the American women over here 
who has left in her storeroom in New York City one 
bottle of wine and one of whisky, and who announced 
to me quietly that she would go home, drink it up, 
and then sign the pledge. 

However, I suddenly discovered that we were avoid- 
ing that sign, and bus 11 was going in and out of 
all sorts of strange streets (to the hurrahing delight 
of the children of the neighborhood, who mistook us 
for an elephant), evidently pursuing another bus just 
ahead of us, as though feeling the advent of spring 
itself. "Where are we going?" I asked the girl 
conductor. 

"Nowhere in partickler, lady," she answered, taking 
a piece of filet lace out of her overcoat pocket and 
beginning to crochet with a settled-for-the-day air. 
It was a very flippant answer for a bus with a route 
and a destination, and we were not alone in our 

217 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

frivolity. We came sudderly upon an open place, 
where a number of huge conveyances were skipping 
clumsily around, under the impression that they were 
lambs in a meadow. 

Then I knew while we were not in the procession 
yet were we of it — at least the victims of it — and that 
the terrible edict had gone forth to "stop traffic." 
It takes but a London bobby's little finger, or the 
slightest negative movement of his wrist, or simply 
the turning of his back upon approaching vehicles to 
cause in five minutes a congestion that in New York 
would be an hour amassing. A mile or two ahead of 
us some bobby, somewhere, under orders, had turned 
his back upon us. 

It is going to be quite impossible to make the reader 
understand what it means to a player to miss a per- 
formance. But she may get a hint of the gravity of 
not playing when the morning papers reveal, now and 
then, that Miss So-and-so, whom she saw acting light- 
heartedly the night before, had news of the death of 
her mother before going on the stage; or she may 
read of an actor dying of appendicitis at midnight 
who had played through the evening, or of one found 
dead in his dressing-room, fully made up, but unheed- 
ful at last of "Beginners, please, sir." The instinct 
to live is the strongest in human nature, but I am sure 
with the actor it is welded in time with the instinct to 
get through a performance. Not a heroic people in 
any way, we players, childish, uncontrolled, unlearned 
sometimes; but we have a sense of responsibihty in 
our work which I trust balances our shortcomings, 
for it must emanate from an appreciation not of what 
we owe ourselves, but the men and women we enter- 
tain. Surely we are the real Servants of the Public. 

21S 



AN AMERICANOS LONDON 

Then, I beg of you, as I sprang from 11 bus in 
a far slum, a thousand miles from anywhere, try to 
imagine the chaos of fear in my heart. I was going 
to miss my performance — ^for the first time in my life 
I was going to miss my performance. My brain swam ; 
then, steeling my panic (I spelled it first ''stealing," 
and it expresses my condition very well), I became 
clear-headed again, and very crafty. Coincident with 
a mighty determination to give that show, a taxi 
crossed my vision. It was a taxi with no desire to 
take on a passenger, or do anything except to get out 
of this Dutch picnic of fat leviathans, and whizz 
into better company. If you can get into a cab, the 
driver cannot refuse to accept you as a fare, and in 
this way, while the car was finessing a path by run- 
ning cautiously along the sidewalk, I cUmbed in all 
unbeknownst to the chauffeur and became a passenger. 

The driver behaved even worse than usual over 
the prospect of making money. He roared to me to 
get ''daown," and I roared back that I would charge 
him if he didn't ''take me on." I pled with him, too. 
I reminded him that his own wife might be waiting 
at that very moment to see me act. "Think of the 
women and children," I concluded, softly. 

He "took me on," not that he was touched, but it 
must have occurred to him that he might empty his 
open taxi by whirling me around corners, for I was 
standing up half the time, trying to drive with my 
spine. And when he saw this was no good he tried 
iTinning down pedestrians, so that we could both be 
arrested, and go nowhere except to gaol. But they 
all got out of his way, as I would cry, "Hi! hi!" from 
over his shoulder, which embarrassed him, as English- 
men do not like a fuss, especially when running over 

219 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

pedestrians. So he gave that up, too. And finally 
the sportsman which is in every Briton got the better 
of his savage, shell-shocked nature, and he assured 
me he would get me there, and, as it was going to be 
costly, ''do try, lady, to enjoy the ride." 

I think in the next half -hoar we visited every place 
of interest in London, west, northwest, and north, 
except the Zoo. I felt hurt, late that night, as I 
stretched my nerve-racked body, and recalled that 
we had not gone to the Zoo. We were a zoo of our 
own. We joined a flock of other mad vehicles with 
the heads of other anxious passengers stuck out of 
the window, and ran hither and thither. I thought 
nothing could be worse than going through the streets, 
until we made our way into Hyde Park, for some 
reason or other, and inadvertently again became part 
of a crowd of motor-buses, now evidently under the 
impression that they were perambulators. In the 
middle of the park I realized, as the blockade became 
greater, that I could not even telephone I was not 
coming. I realized this at the moment I discovered 
myself to be almost entirely undressed. My boots 
were unfastened, garments loosened, and hat off, for 
I was making unconscious attempts to do up my hair 
after the fashion worn in the play. 

Then something more happened, as the blocked 
vehicles began wedging their way forward — the petrol 
gave out. The driver confessed it, and without satis- 
faction. He was even sorry for me, sorrier than for 
himself. He must have caught the despair in my eye, 
for he arose to a supreme height of ingenuity. "There 
is one 'ope — a hambulance. They can go through 
the lines." He probably thought I was a fit case for 
one, and at that, with the concerted effort of our two 

220 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

wills, we did conjure up an ambulance. It was a 
little American one, of whose appearance we are not 
very proud over here, for our machines are cheap and 
bunty-looking as compared to the luxurious propor- 
tions of the British cars. "An ill-favored thing, but 
mine own," yet, like these little motors on the battle- 
field, it could go anywhere. And it did. 

Two gum-chewing doughboys drove it, while I, a 
stretcher-bearer case, with the curtain-flaps tied down, 
lay inside, my watch in my hand. Yet I did not need 
my watch. I knew that those boys were going to 
back me up to the stage-door in time for my per- 
formance. And my first statement to the members 
of the company who had gathered nervously on the 
pavement was significant of a woman's enormous in- 
terest in herself: ''What," I gasped to them, my head 
protruding from the curtain, "what if America had 
not gone into the war? " The play went on, the little 
ambulance remained outside, and gum was chewed 
throughout the afternoon by two honored guests in 
the audience. 

Naturally, the arrival from France of these various 
regiments who marched in the Guards' procession 
antedated this event, and it was to see how London 
received the conquerors before they were scoured up 
for show that I attended the detraining of the Scots 
Guards on the first day that one could ride on the top 
of a bus and ask oneself, "Were three overcoats nec- 
essary?" I was preparing for a tremendous welcome. 
England has shown throughout the war more emo- 
tionalism than has her temperamental sister, France. 
In 1916, at least, regiments marched through the 
streets of Paris without so much as a head turned 
in their direction. Even the little French boy, in 

221 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

black, continued to roll his hoop along the Elysees 
walk. It may have been because he was in black, 
because he and all the rest of France were as much 
part of the war as the warriors themselves, that he 
had become apathetic over the clump-clump of sol- 
diers' feet. 

Certainly emotionalism was not encouraged. The 
blesses for Paris were taken off the hospital ti^ains at 
Gare de la Chapelle, a remote station, where the pub- 
lic had no access. Here in London, for four years. 
Charing Cross Station has been the sad, daily Mecca 
of thousands of citizens who came with flowers and 
dainties and a sob in their throats for the wounded, 
hastened by rail and water in twenty-four hours' 
time direct from their Calvaries. They tell me the 
crowds never lessened and the tears never ceased. 
And I think it is very significant of the English that 
they do not show their affections unless their people 
need it very much. There is the story of an earl who 
became a private, only to find himself in company 
with one of his grooms. Yet he remained an earl as 
far as his attitude toward the groom was concerned 
until the '^mere person" was wounded, when the 
belted gentleman worked over him in an agony of 
devotion, as he would have worked over his own kin. 

Certainly the enthusiasm over the Scots Guards 
was tempered. I met them at Madame Tussaud's 
and began demanding angrily of the woman next to 
me why the people didn't cheer. She said she didn't 
know, as she had come up from the country, which 
was reason enough. I essayed a feeble shout, and was 
looked at, oh, ever so kindly! but looked at. After 
that first cheer, which gave me courage, I was ready 
for anything, and, quite to my own surprise, found 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

myself alongside the color-bearer, in company with 
several unashamed females who undoubtedly had 
their men in the ranks. I had no man, but they were 
a fine-looking set, and I was very willing to let any 
one think I had. I also ran. ahead at various points, 
and tried to start a cheer. I was quite mad. Certain 
contained gentlemen must have longed to cry, "Egad, 
why doesn't this noisy American go home and cheer? " 

One had to run to keep up with these fellows. They 
give no appearance of moving rapidly, but their stride 
is so long that I must take two paces to their one. 
At Oxford Street I made my way fiercely through the 
crowd, inciting them to violence, and I also blazed 
a trail for the most delightful woman on the pavement. 
I had noticed her in my gallopings to and fro. She 
was limping along, perfectly silent, but beaming from 
every pore, with her eyes fixed on one huge, middle- 
aged giant, who was looking most conscious, and in 
his embarrassment refusing to take any notice of 
her. She was undoubtedly his "old woman." She 
carried, as a flag to attract his attention, a pillow- 
case which she had not quite the courage to wave at 
full length, for she was a lone critter, but kittle-cattle 
in the eyes of men. Still, we managed it together. 
At one point where they marked time, lifting their 
feet high as our soldiers scuffle, the old woman and 
I linked up together, although she never knew this, 
and I besought her to "Wave! Wave!" while I piped 
up "Hip! Hip!" One "Hip" will start an English 
crowd. They caught the word, the pillow-case soared, 
the masses cheered, the soldier turned and nodded to 
his "old woman," and then their neat black shoes 
pounded on to South Audley Street. 

She remained behind. She was satisfied, and she 

223 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

would have been more so could I ever have told her 
of his continued wagging of his head as he marched 
along, and of his face softened in delighted recollection. 
I was by this time running everything. I was un- 
consciously murmuring, ''Hats off," to those who did 
not salute the colors, even though I was glad to find 
that the average man in the street was as little 
inclined to lift his hat as the average man is at home. 
But it made me a little heavy-hearted, since I had 
adopted this regiment, that the loudest cheers along 
the way were given by the troops themselves whenever 
they passed a hospital. They had a funny w^ay of 
going sharply and quickly, "Hurray, hurray! 
hurray!" and no more, to the wounded men and 
the pretty nurses. And perhaps there were eleven 
of that marching regiment who gave another and a 
silent cheer for the original full complement of their 
first number. Eleven alone are left of that first flam- 
ing regiment that swept over France, and, like a 
forest fire, was battened down. 

This was the day when I came home perspiring, 
not a delicate subject nor worthy of record, but of 
such interest to me that I see less humor than I 
once did in the Scotch courtship which begins with, 
"Do you sweat?" It was a red-letter day for me, al- 
though I might have fixed the date easily any way, 
for Mrs. Hacking made it memorable by conveying 
to me, delicately, her fear that Beechey drank. I 
had taken occasion to mark our port and sherry, one 
of those lead-pencil marks on the label that any one 
who was crafty enough to steal liquor w^ould be crafty 
enough to see. But the liquors continued steadily 
going down, and when I summoned up the courage to 
speak to Mrs. Hacking about it (oh, those heart- 

224 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

beating moments in domestic life when we must begin 
to make a row!), she said that she herself had noticed 
the marks on the bottle when she arranged them in 
the cupboard, and had appreciated why I had put 
them on. Once or twice, being an older woman, she 
had thought to make bold to speak to her (my brain 
grew thick at ''her" — what did Mrs. Hacking mean 
by that?), but of course ''it ain't my plice, madam, is 
it?" It all came, Mrs. Hacking delicately concluded, 
from the poor young girl (oh, undoubtedly Beechey 
now!) being so dispirited from the war. A body was 
one of two things now — low-spirited or too high- 
spirited. 

I could, and should, have replied to this that if 
Beechey was low-spirited, she was 'igli, and I wanted 
her to leave my own particular kind of spirits alone; 
but the fear of an out-and-out clash with any one so 
infernally clever as Mrs. Hacking was not in tune with 
my idea of a peaceful spring. I tried now to square 
my conscience with the placating thought that, while 
I was losing money by Mrs. Hacking, I was getting 
another side-light upon the war — its consequences — 
which was good for the book. Thus, as usual, sacri- 
ficing myself for art. 

The situation was complex. Out of partizanship 
for my friend I declared to her that if Beechey needed 
spirits she must have them, and no doubt Mrs. Hack- 
ing knew I would say this, and knew that I would not 
dare lock up the bottles, which would suggest a lack 
of faith in my guest. So I went on, a fly in a spider's 
M'eb, without a buzz in me, and longing at times 
most ardently for my abstemious colored girls at home. 

But to the end Mrs. Hacking was not a revolting 
spider. She kept the web neat, and beyond an in- 

225 



AN AMERICANOS LONDON 

clination to let her hair go blooey on the days she had 
the headaches, beginning at noon when the pubs were 
open, she always made a good appearance. In a very 
impersonal way, I could not help but admire the in- 
telligence with which she ensnared me. She stood 
for a lesson to all the vampire breed, who generally 
give themselves away by their clothes the moment 
they slink upon the scene. Since she was intelligent, 
I tapped her fount of wisdom as often as I could that I 
might gain some mental advantage to oppose my 
material losses. In spite of her upbringing (and on 
headache days she darkly suggested that her father's 
mother was a lady), I don't think she had ever had 
much of a chance, even though she had been sent to 
a Board school— ninepence a week, if you please and 
sixpence extra for French. 

At fifteen she had gone into 'Hhe bar," in the 
East End of London, and after that came years of 
service with splendid ladies of good address who 
called her by her last name, as I would never dare 
to do, and who played bridge for such high stakes that 
occasionally the 'tecs called at the house. I thought 
when Mrs. Hacking first told me this she was refer- 
ring to students, and I asked her where was the 
Technology. And as she replied they did not call it 
the Technology over here, but the police station, I 
realized she was speaking of detectives. 

The occasional mislaying of a fifty-pound note or 
the discovery of marked cards did not detract from 
the enjoyment of being a servant in such households. 
Again a dull below-stairs existence was kept in a glow 
by vicarious excitements, lurid, tainted joys, but joys 
held in esteem by the Mrs. Hackings of life, since 
the participants were their highly scented betters. 

226 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

Then came her marriage, her two children, a httle 
house in the suburbs and, from what I could gather, 
a decent existence. After an interval was recorded 
the loss of one child, then war, the loss of her hus- 
band, the loss of the second child, and the parting 
with the piano and the mangle. Again Mrs. Hacking 
went out to service, not shaken by grief — I found no 
signs of that — but rather like the belting that has 
slipped from off the fly-M^heel and goes beating dan- 
gerously around in the air. 

On the day she told me she had ''joined up" for 
motor-van instniction and service, to take effect when 
I gave up my house, I told her bluntly that I would 
not give her a character for such head-work, I had 
a picture of Mrs. Hacking wiping off the foam on 
her khaki sleeve at the noon hour and climbing 
up on a high seat to go cavorting over humble 
folk like me. She expressed surprise at this, and 
showed me her letters of commendation for her 
work "in the shells." She then went into the 
many processes of munitions meticulously, and prac- 
tically constructed a deadly explosive for me as I 
had my breakfast. 

She did not lose a night in eighteen months, but 
was beat out when she got through. Yes, she had 
seen some 'orrid sights, a girl scalped from forehead 
to the nape of her neck, and all just from carelessness. 
Nine out of ten of the accidents were from indiffer- 
ence to rules. Ladies had worked alongside of her, 
some of them had driven her home in their own 
motor-cars, and the ladies didn't generally have acci- 
dents, for they were more careful; still, they were 
awful tired driving home. The girls of the lower 
classes would keep their hau' up with wire hairpins, 

227 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

although they were told of the risk they ran. They 
didn't seem to take it in. 

And yet, Mrs. Hacking thought, on the whole, 
munition-making was work better suited to the rough- 
est girls, and from what I could make out by that 
statement it was because they had less imagination 
and worked in less terror with a deft sureness. All 
the more credit to the great ladies, Mrs. Hacking 
thought, and so did I, for I, too, had once intended 
going into the shells, that I might share some of the 
real dangers of war. Yet the picture of ensuing bleed- 
ing stumps had reduced me to such a state of in- 
competency that I had been told I would be of no 
use, anyway. 

"Yes, it was exciting, madam," concluded my 
housekeeper, walking off with the oil stove to the 
bath-room, ''and it leaves a blank." 

She went out at noon to change a shilling for pen- 
nies at the pub, and I could understand that this 
was Mrs. Hacking's way of filling up the blank. That 
same night she served us with a crab that was prob- 
ably entered in my housekeeping-book at three times 
what she had paid for it, emulating her betters in an 
interesting form of double-dealing without fear of the 
'tecs. So worked her able, dishonestly trained mind. 

It was rather a relief to seek refuge from the plot- 
tings of my maisonnette and go down to the House 
of Mirth, as I heard one theater-goer call the abode 
of our comedy-drama. We women sit in the wings 
near the entrances, and work on sheer underwear now, 
whereas the actresses during the war knitted socks 
as they waited for their cue. Roars from the audience, 
varying in volume, come to us. Sometimes there is 
a silence when we were rhythmically expecting the 

228 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

usual laugh, and we look at each other and smile, for 
the actor on the stage has slurred his point. The 
stage-manager comes from the ''prompt" entrance 
and growls because the man ''changed his reading," 
or he will briefly announce, ''Somebody coughed." 

It's everybody coughed when I'm on the scene, 
or it sounds that way, but one cough from one auditor 
is as a javelin leveled against a comedy-point; and I 
don't see how the vocal expression of a tickling sen- 
sation in the throat is always arranged for just on 
the word that brings the laugh. Sometunes the actor 
hears a sort of preparation for the explosion, and hur- 
ries to the end of his sentence before the climacteric 
bark is reached. "Beat him to it," the juvenile whis- 
pered to me the other night, as I was galloping along 
ahead of a gentleman easing his bronchitis, and I 
did reach my top-note before he got to his. But 
again, they are too swift for me, and then I must 
repeat my phrases, mark time with an appearance of 
natural, hesitating speech, until the cough is stilled 
and I ring out my voice on the point. The audience 
laughs at me then for being a kindly, humorous per- 
son; but oh, if they knew the hate in my heart! 

For it would seem that some theater-goers buy a 
stall, or an orchestra-chair at home, for the express 
purpose of rumbling their affliction through the audi- 
torium. It is a little pleasure party for the cough. 
The possessor should really buy an extra ticket, one 
for himself and one for the bronchial tubes. They 
are both equally in evidence. The patron of the 
arts will argue that he can't help it — but he can. He 
can restrain his cough until a point is made. When 
the scene becomes tense on the stage the coughing 
ceases all over the house. They forget the cough, 

229 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

and when the situation is reheved the whoops begin. 
It is the same way on the other side the curtain. 
How seldom an actor coughs on the stage, yet how 
often he coughs in the wings, to the distress of his 
companions still on the scene! And on that night you 
hear an actor bark through his own lines send for 
the undertaker — he is far gone. 

It comes to me some nights, when the great, round, 
welcome volume of laughing sound continues delight- 
fully through the piece, when royalty is in the box, and 
the comedian is j)laying up, when the carriages of 
the sovereigns wait outside by the stage-door, and 
well-dressed plain-clothes men stand casually about — ■ 
it comes to me then that this is not entirely the 
House of Mirth, but the House of Contrasts, for the 
real drama is not of the stage, but of the men behind 
the scenes, and with a full cast of characters in the 
audience to balance our comedy with their tragedies. 

We play to all sorts of peoples, and various messages 
are brought by those actors who have opened the play 
and made their exit to those yet to make their en- 
trances. ''Pitch your voice high," we suggest, for 
we have seen a young man in uniform with his hand 
to his ear, straining for the humor of the play. Or it 
may be, ''Don't stare down on the front row — a boy 
is there with his nose gone." At times from across the 
blur that the footlights create we detect curious little 
bobbing motions, as though late-comers were having 
a hard time reaching their seats far from the aisle. 
Then we see, with a pang of pity that in no way 
affects the mechanism of our comedy, that some one- 
legged soldiers are hopping between the rows, their 
crutches resting against the gold incrustation of the 
boxes. We so often see those crutches against the 

230 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

boxes. They are but homely yellow oak amid the 
gilded garlands, yet surely no theater ever boasted 
a more noble decoration. 

On the days that the blind soldiers of St. Dun- 
stan's are in front we find ourselves introducing lines 
into our speeches that they may more perfectly under- 
stand the action of the play. As we pick up our prop- 
erties we mention their names; when a mimic battle 
is fought with dishes, the china is articled aloud. 
We call the characters by name, as they make their 
entrances. And if we do this haltingly I pray that 
the audience will pardon us, for after weeks of rhyth- 
mic speech the introduction of new words, even new 
gestures, fills us with panic. 

It was only the other day that I suddenly discovered 
I had cut the comedian out of three of his best laughs 
by jumping down to the end of the scene. They were 
laughs on lines, too, and not on actions, and there 
were blind boys in front who would have enjoyed the 
point, so I was all the more apologetic to the comedian 
when we made our exit. I confessed to him that I 
had been mentally rehanging my pictures in my 
New York flat, and he said he had been in his New 
York parlor while we were playing the scene, telling 
his folks all about the trip. The funny part about 
it is that my understudy, out in front, said we really 
did play the entire scene, never did it better, and 
the blind boys had laughed uproariously. The come- 
dian didn't know he had spoken the lines, I didn't 
know I had heard them, so busy were we in our New 
York apartments. Not that this has anything to do 
with the House of Contrasts, but that it goes to show, 
when one has become mechanical, the possible terri- 
fying effects of introducing new words and actions. 

16 231 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

And I like to think that we get along with our in- 
novations as well as we do because we are intent 
upon the imdilcs and not, strangely enough — as we 
are supposed to be a vain lot — concentrated upon 
ourselves. 

Back on the stage the little tragedies continue, un- 
written, unsung. On a narrow platform on the 0. P. 
side, the spot-light that shines upon our comedy 
is controlled by a demobbed man who agonizingly 
drags himself up the iron ladder which leads to the 
light, for his spine is permanently injured. I never 
get any farther than, ''Is it bad to-night?" and he 
answers, "Pretty bad, ma'am." 

He is less optimistic than the gentle-eyed soldier 
with the paralyzed arm who feeds the light on the 
"prompt" side. He is always "getting better, thank 
you." He is trying to get better. After he has pulled 
himself up the little ladder by one arm, he sits along- 
side his light and employs both hands by embroider- 
ing industriously, while we women below, amid our 
billows of fine nainsook, occasionally smile up at him 
—a comrade in the arts. 

At the back of the scene the third light was for a 
time watched by a perfectly whole young man wear- 
ing a belt covered with regimental badges of all 
kinds — cut from off dead comrades, I fear — which 
were to be secured from him at a price. The tragedy 
of this young man was his wholeness, for, try as he 
might, he could get no regular work to do, and 
guarding the "spots" is not sufficient to keep one 
whole. So he was driven back to the army, joined 
up for Russia, and only prayed he was to have the 
care of 'osses. There were two over in France that 
he had grown particular fond of — Gipsy and Doorkey 

232 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

(I went back several times to ask him about Doorkey, 
and finally discovered the horse was Darky), and he 
cried like a babby when he 'ad to leave them. He said 
feeding the light in the theater was no man's job after 
feeding 'osses, and there I agreed "with him, for I can 
imagine nothing more sacrificial than training a light 
to shine on somebody else. 

He alone, of all the stage crew — and every one of 
them is touched by the war— was willing to talk of 
his adventures. I think with these little men it is 
not from lack of interest, but that it is all, all un- 
speakable. Besides, when a thing is over with an 
Englishman, it is over. To be sure, Mrs. Wren will 
give me information on the treatment of her nephew, 
long imprisoned by the Germans, and how the 
men suffered until the blessed Red Cross packets 
came through. The nephew is now back in the 
business with his father, restless and miserable, I 
learn (for naturally he would confide in Mrs. Wren, 
as I do). He would as lief be a German prisoner, 
he says, he would liefer, for a prisoner has a chance 
of escape! 

Mrs. Wren varies the stories of her nephew wdth 
those of raid nights, when the shrapnel of the barrage 
rattled upon the roof of our theater as the actors 
continued in their roles, the British audience remain- 
ing finnly in their seats. The foj^ers, these nights, 
were open to the public, and soon filled with a con- 
trolled mob, forgetting the terror outside as they peered 
through the glass door at the lesser show upon the 
stage. Every attache of the theater has his story of 
these raids, but the door-man tops them all in the 
recounting of his trip home on one of these memorable 
nights, choosing, as a fearless ex-policeman should, 

233 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

the top of an omnibus where, of a sudden-like, a 
gentleman seated directly in front burst all over him. 

I have now upon my mantel-shelf a Toby jug, the 
gift of a good woman who has scrubbed the old oaken 
steps of our theater for thirty years. I put upon her 
finger one day the ring of one who had worn it on the 
battle-field over which her son had fought. For she 
had no keepsake of her lost boy — no canteen, identity 
disk, or shred of clothing. For a year he was dead to 
her, killed, as his captain had reported, and then, 
quite recently, so that we Americans all shared in her 
bewilderment and concern, came a card from a Ger- 
man hospital. It was a card of almost a year ago, 
on which the boy had written for fruit. And at the 
bottom of his message the German nurse had added 
that the next day this prisoner had died. It must 
be that, until a short time ago, the nurse had not 
looked over her effects, and, finding the post-card, 
sent it on. I gave the mother the ring on the day she 
came to ask if I advised her to 'ope. I took it from 
my finger as I advised her not to hope, and I trust 
I may be forgiven for painting the skill and kind- 
ness of German nurses and doctors in more glow- 
ing colors than a pro-Ally should. If the old lady 
found no room in her worn heart for belief she 
made a place for gratitude, and her prized Toby jug 
is now mine. 

So the play goes on. We step from the brilliant 
blaze of the stage to the great, dignified dark places 
behind the canvas walls, dotted with broken men 
bent uncomplainingly to their task. And when the 
royalties have gone and the house is black save for 
the light of the stage-door, we pass by old Ned 
the fireman, white-haired, aged, smiling, ever 

234 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

smiling. Only once could I stumble out, ^'I'm aw- 
fully sorry about your boy/' and old Ned per- 
mitted himself, ''Not even a grave, ma'am," then 
continued smiling. 

So out in the night from the House of Mirth — the 
House of Contrasts — or is it not the House of Pain? 




Chapter XV 

iEECHEY says, if one hasn't the money to 
shop in the spring, one should fall in love, 
and that made me nervous, for she was with- 
out money, the dog never having paid for its portiait 
except in grateful tail-waggings. I told her to wait 
a little while until I could look around, as I could 
not trust her judgment. She would be sure to choose 
a gentleman because he was paintable or looked like 
Sargent. In the mean time, we would shop together, 
visiting only those agreeable places wliere you were 
not solicited to spend any money. 

Most of the big shops nowadays have adopted the 
American fashion of leaving you to wander at will 
without the sensation that the house detective is fol- 
lowing you about, ready to pounce upon j^ou if a pur- 
chase is not made inunediately. We go for prefer- 
ence to Knightsbridge, as it fills the imagination to 
be buying boudoir-caps in such a neighborhood. 
Where are the knights? Where is the bridge that 
they rode across? Where is the stream that the 
bridge spanned, over which the knights rode? Don't 
any one tell me. Leave it to my pleasant im- 
aginings — but how glibly we use the word now Tvdth- 
out analysis! 

We know only one knight in this district, but we 
have friends all along the way, mostly the little dogs 
of the blind men. One of these blind men used to go 

23t> 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

down on the top of the bus with me, the boy who 
leads hun to his place of business on the sidewalk 
sitting with his patron while his sort of fox-terrier 
sat with me on my fur coat. I don't know how long 
his master has been in the blind business, but he was 
not always so, for he once told the boy, who was new 
to the world, that he had helped build the big shops, 
and most of 'em had begun with nothing at all. It 
was encouraging to know that something could be 
evolved out of nothing at all, but it accounted for 
this obvious adding on of wings, and different levels, 
and lifts that take you to one department, but shut 
you off from another on the same floor; staircases 
that lead up, but won't go down to the streets, and 
dress-goods that are on one side of the road refusing 
to have anything to do with triromings on the other. 
In America we would tear down everything and begin 
over again, but here all is gradual growth, and while 
this is complicating and irritating, it is their way, and 
I don't have to shop here if I don't want to. 

I don't always hold this tolerant thought as I 
always should. But I get into a fine rage over other 
Americans who refuse to lend themselves to the man- 
ners of the country they visit. We of the United 
States are sometimes laughed at in Europe for our 
active sightseeing, but surely the most maddening 
of all tourists must be such of us as refuse to see. 
''Strand Americans," I call them. They sit in the 
lobbies of the big hotels in the Strand and groan be- 
cause everything isn't just as it is in the country 
they have left. With a history to dig into which 
makes the wildest fiction tame, a history illustrated 
by palaces and castles, churches and picture-galleries, 
country inns and joy-rides, history that can be learned 

237 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

without any strain on the intellect — all they have to 
do is look, and the looking is beautiful— they relieve 
the tedium of a London day by steady attendance 
at a cinema. 

''What did you see this afternoon?" I asked one 
pretty girl, feeling virtuous myself, as I had just come 
from Westminster. 

''Charlie Chaplin — immense!" was her answer. 

One doesn't have to have friends in London to 
keep occupied, but now that my visiting-list is a long 
one, sightseeing is not of the vigorous quality that it 
was once over here, and I suppose my day during this 
visit is about what the average London householder 
embraces. Besides little dog-friends in Knightsbridge 
we have two-legged ones whom we know well enough 
to drop in on. You have to know them pretty well 
to drop in for tea, and if I have one criticism to make 
of delightful English ways, it is this business of en- 
gaging you far ahead for the tea-hour and holding 
it as inviolable as a formal dinner. An opportunity 
may present itself that will bring the expected guest 
a less ephemeral enjoyment, but a cup of tea for which 
you have contracted ten days before stands squarely 
in the middle of the afternoon. 

The talk is always good at these teas, however, 
although if I haven't got my sugar I set my cup aside. 
No one nags at- me for not drinking — I was invited at 
the tea-hour, not necessarily to drink tea. Always I 
looked around to see if there was anything eligible 
for Beechey's springtime, as men come to these parties 
and do not roar for a cocktail. And, of course, I 
continued searching for an Englishwoman who would 
call me by my first name without dying of embarrass- 
ment. I had known so many of them for so many 

238 







•;--""- Irrj V-S^- :^ '.'■* ^•^ 















'\: ': 






'N 



COUNTRY INNS AND JOY-RIDES — HISTORY WITHOUT ANY^ STRAIN 
ON THE INTELLECT 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

years, and loved tliem so much, and I was still Mrs. 
Clossei:-Hale. 

Strangely enough, the very one I picked out to call 
me Louise I met in a lovely studio in Knightsbridge. 
It was in the spring, so I suppose we make friends at 
the budding hour just as we find best young men. 
Yes, and she now calls me Louise, although she is 
more brash with the name when she writes it down 
in notes. It is pleasant to reflect, however, that she 
will be calling me by my first name for ever and a day, 
and not returning as early as August to the more 
formal address, as some lovers do. That is one of the 
joys of friendship. All demonstrative signs of it are 
hurriedly put aside when one takes on a love-affair, 
yet the friendship is not forgotten; just laid on a shelf 
for safe-keeping, perhaps. And when the lover slips 
away with the season, the more stable form of affec- 
tion is found, as glowing as ever, impervious to the 
chill of winter. 

I wish more women had the talent — and the courage 
— for making warm, personal friends of men. It takes 
talent, but it must be cultivated. The mean art of 
coquetry which we for long believed to be the only 
allure to hold the animal is no part of that talent. 
It would frighten them and they would bound away. 
And it takes courage, for half the world will believe 
she is trying to ensnare him, and our pride is so im- 
mense, especially when we are not much loved. Yet 
I think the disquiet in many a woman's lonely breast 
would be allayed if she had the simplest of companion- 
ship with some one not of her sex. And how nice it 
would be for him ! He could spend hours telling her all 
about his love-affairs. 

The fiction-writer would have these two fall in 

239 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

love, but the qualities of mind and heart that would 
bring them together have nothing to do with passion. 
I knew one man and woman, after years of friend- 
ship, to expand, as they first called it, into a closer 
association, and the world stopped for them. They 
had nothing to talk about, nothing to laugh at. 
Very wonderfully they forswore each other, with 
enthusiasm, and went back to being friends once 
more. But some of us would have shattered the 
amethystine vase. 

The pursuit of a young man for Beechey very nearly 
ruined my prospects of the acquirement of an English- 
woman friend for me, and that they were not ruined, 
that she did develop into a friend, may have been for 
the reason that she turned out to be a Canadian. 
While you are in the United States you may think 
there is not much difference between an English- 
woman and a Canadian, but over here you find that it 
is an abyss not to be spanned by bridges of airships. 

This lady, after seeing the play, had sent me a 
letter to the theater, signing a name that we all know 
in fiction, and wondering if London was too great 
for us to meet, and behold! she was my neighbor, 
living behind a very clean green door across the square. 
I was anxious to meet her and make a good impression, 
which" meant conducting myself with decorum up to 
and during the first rencontre. If you ever become a 
friend to an Enghsh woman, you can do any scandalous 
thing afterward you please. '^She is my friend," the 
Englishwoman will say, and therefore must be right. 

But on the night before I was to juggle with the 
tea-cup, thin bread and butter, jam (perhaps), sugar 
(barel}^ probable), and elegant conversation, an Amer- 
ican presented himself at our stage-door with a letter 

240 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

of introduction which pronounced him to be a bachelor, 
a New York business man, and therefore excellent for 
Beechey. I reviewed the costume Beechey had worn 
at dinner, and would probably be wearing on my re- 
turn. It was a dull blue, smocked wherever possible, 
with sandals worn over a pair of my silk stockings, 
the whole effect quite appealing — according to my 
theory of opposites— to a New York business man very 
natty in correct evening dress. 

I decided to invite him home, although I could not 
think of anything for supper except cold haddock, 
but if we waited long enough, Beechey would bring 
up the chafing-dish, bring up the methylated spirits, 
set fire to the table-cloth, spill the milk, do all those 
engaging things that should attract a man who never 
had a spot on his shirt-front in his life, with the effort 
ending in a rjiclangc which Beechey called a cheese 
fondu. Therefore I asked him to drive home in my 
four-wheeler, which might be induced to wait and 
take him back again to the Ritz. 

It ended in dismissing the growler and driving home 
in his own motor, the largest one in the world. I was 
quite apologetic when I realized the enormity of his 
general scheme of living. I warned him that he 
would find it dull in Chelsea, but he replied easily 
that no doubt two Americans could stir things up 
even in a Chelsea Square. I should have got down 
then and there and taken the Tube, for with his smiling 
assurance a conviction came to me that this kind of 
young American was sure to stir up things, whether 
he meant to or not. And while I admired it, I would 
prefer the stir to take place in our own country. 

It began quietly enough — the stir. The chauffeur 
admitted when we reached the house that the lights 

241 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

were low and it would take some few minutes to 
look after the batteries. "Will it make a noise?" I 
asked, for an English conservatism was creeping over 
me. I could hear the N. Y. B. M. (New York business 
man) chuckle as I asked the question. But the driver's 
reply was reassuring. The next mild commotion was 
calling for Beechey, to be answered by angry Pome- 
ranians, for no artistic mousey-eyed girl came to greet 
us, and, upon feeling m}^ M^ay in and leading the N. Y. 
B. M., both of us falling unpropitiously over the an- 
cient wedding-chest, a note was discovered to the 
effect that she had gone to spend the night with a 
sick friend. 

Beechey had placed the note where I would be 
most apt to see it. It was stabbed down to the cold 
haddock with a hair-pin! I did not know, until 
recriminations set in upon her return next day, that 
the hair-pin was taken from a new packet, and my 
supper guest will never know. Strictly speaking, I 
should not call him my supper guest, as he ate no 
supper after discovering the impaled fish. Although 
he laughed a good deal, I found it difficult to outline 
to him Beechey's delicious qualities and appearance, 
with only the hair-pin episode for him to build on. 
As I saw him, alert, successful, anxious in his newness 
to be correct, I wondered what he would do to a wife 
who pinned notes to fish for his New York supper 
friends to see, even as I did not have to wonder how 
the leading man would act when I recounted this 
discovery of my midnight visitor. For he became a 
midnight visitor, and an after-midnight visitor, and 
still the ignition remained unresponsive. Toward 
one o'clock the chauffeur rapped a perfectly new rap 
with the knocker, awakening the dog next door, the 

242 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

Pomeranians, and my landlady, to say he would have 
to go to the garage for assistance. 

' 'Perhaps," I suggested to the N. Y. B. M., ''you 
would like to walk down?" 

"Walk! I don't know the way," he protested. 

I forebore to tell him that I had a map, and on we 
plunged into conversational depths. We gave to each 
other slices of our history that up till then had been 
a secret, not di^allging this decause we found ourselves 
affinities, but for the terridle reason that the coal- 
scuttle was empty, the oil stove was smelling, and we 
were talking against time. By two o'clock that 
morning I was ready, with an understanding hitherto 
denied me, to make allowances for the indiscretions 
of many characters in fiction stranded on islands or 
missing last trains. I would tell this man anything 
to keep him interested. I would make up anything. 
At two-fifteen, as I was about to engage him with the 
information that none of my family could read or 
write, and two of them were hanged, the silence of 
our correct little square was broken by a series of ex- 
plosions. We both thought of air raids, and wondered 
if the Huns had come over for a last shoot-up. Neither 
of us cared, so long as one or the other was killed. 
The New York business man dismissed this pleasing 
hope first. Yet a satisfaction crept over his tired face, 
for it was his car waking up my Chelsea Square. 

We rushed to the window and saw, wheeling around 

a far corner, his huge leviathan hitched to one even 

greater, a truck of vast proportions, making a tour of 

our park with the evident idea of turning the engine 

over by the rapidity of motion. The muffler was cut 

out, blue fire blaz6d from beneath both chassis, and 

the explosions were continual. Around and around 

243 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

these mad joy-riders went. We could see lights ap- 
pear at upper windows, and heads stuck out, like the 
scene from ''The Mastersingers." The house of the 
correct novelist on whom I was to call became a blaze 
of inquiring lights. 

"You must go home," I sternly told my guest. 

''I can't," he replied. ''I can't go down to the 
Ritz on a battery in action." 

"You can detach the truck and ride down in it. " 

"To the Ritz!" 

"Then sit in your car and let the truck tow you 
down." 

"How would it look?" 

"I don't care how it looks," I snapped. "How does 
this look?" 

"I don't know how it looks. It sounds like Fourth 
of July." 

"Then go outside and enjoy yourself," I contended, 
crossly. "I am sorry, but for the sake of appearances 
I can't have you staying here any longer." There was 
no reason why I should not exhibit my temper before 
this young man; I had revealed everything else in 
my life to him. 

He behaved remarkably, as if he were confused, 
not at my bad temper, for he expected nothing of a 
family who couldn't read or write and had mostly 
died on the gallows, but, rather, at the evidences of 
my moral worth. "I thought you were a Bohemian," 
he stammered. 

I felt hopeless. "East is East and West is West," 
passed through my mind. Because Beechey had 
stabbed the fish with a hair-pin, because I was on 
the stage, because we do many unconventional things 
in life, since we haven't the money to be conventional 

244 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

and comfortable at the same time, the "outsider" 
(as the theater calls the humble business man) thinks 
we haven't any laws of any kind. 

They don't understand at all — they never will. 
If they did they wouldn't be business men, so kind and 
able, and helping us out of many difficulties by their 
advice. They would be artists like ourselves, and we 
would all starve to death in a week or so, for there 
would be no one to purchase our wares. My mind 
raced on. Suppose Beechey had met and, of course, 
married him? Suppose they had had a little son with 
his mother's love of painting, whom his father insisted 
on putting in the business. What a heartbreak that 
would be for the boy, and for Beechey, and for the 
father, as the lad would never make a business man. 

So my answer to his query would have been oracular 
to him if the engine had not turned over at that especial 
moment. For, thinking of Beechey, I ejaculated, 
fervently, "Saved!" and the New York business man 
let his eye rest pityingly upon my ancient frame 
under the impression that I was referring to the pres- 
ervation of my good name. 

The truck was detached, and his big motor purred 
at the door. I was speeding the parting guest as 
speedily as I could, piloting him around that sneering 
wedding-chest, and while I couldn't see his face, his 
cordial voice still rang out cheerfully to the further 
annoyance of the Poms, "I said two Americans would 
stir things up, didn't I?" 

"You stirred up more than a noise," was my fare- 
well. 

I suppose he thought it was my aged heart, but it 
wasn't. It was a question as to the fallibility of my 
Theory of Opposites. 

245 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

The next day, when I called upon my neighbor 
(the stranger, upon invitation, calls first in this coun- j 
try), the butler said she was not at home, which did | 
not surprise me at all, but he added that I must come 
up, anyw^ay, as I was expected. Her delay may have 
been one way of expressing her disapproval, yet she 
was not unrepresented in that pleasant drawing-room 
which looked out upon the stubborn plane-trees, re- 
fusing to leaf, over toward our purple door. Another 
woman who writes and whom Americans read was 
waiting also, and as she had not kicked up any kind 
of rumpus the night before the tardiness of the hostess 
was probably not a punishment. 

I liked this woman unmediately, and hoped she 
would become, possibly, a second English friend who 
would call me Louise. She had been to see our play, 
and said the right things about it — only actors can 
say the right things about a play, as a rule — more 
than that, she was not hidebound by conservatism. 
She fought against it with all the power she could 
summon, hampered, as she was, by an Oxford accent. 
She told me of her little son, who had wanted the 
umbrella up because the other people in the street had 
their umbrellas up. She said they walked the full 
length of the street after that, although it did begin 
to rain, to encourage his individualism. ''We are doing 
it because it is different," she told his -correct little 
self. 

This pleased but confused me. It confused me, 
too, the way she answered questions with her Oxford 
voice. She never said yes or no. She said, ''I did," 
or *'I did not," and I could no more analyze it than 
I could my sudden heaping of confidences upon her, 
not because it was past midnight, but for the reason 

246 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

that she seemed enormously interested in me. She 
laughi^d at my jokes, too. When a writer smiles cau- 
tiously at your humor you had better hurry it into 
print before he gets ahead of you. But if he laughs 
he is enjoying the moment, and will forget. It is 
hard to store up and laugh at the same time. 

I found out the cause of this sudden precipitation 
of myself at this lady and of her unembarrassed ac- 
ceptance of my confidences. I had found it out after 
the hostess came in, gay and apologetic, and perfectly 
delighted over the noise of the night before. Nothing 
so exciting had happened since the great fog, she said, 
when a bus turned into the square and kept creeping 
around under the impression that it was twisting along 
the highway. ''My husband was. one of the passen- 
gers, too, wondering when he was going to get home. 
The petrol gave out, and they settled down in front 
of our house. He went to sleep, and when the fog 
lifted at dawn I discovered him, and sent out a tin 
of hot sha\dng-water. He said he had known funnier 
things — but then, he is English." 

"Aren't you?" 

In this way I learned that she was Canadian, and 
my other new acquaintance in the room was — why 
didn't I realize it before? — Irish! Unless our Irish 
friends speak with a brogue as thick as the Russell 
brothers, we Americans find them only through the 
warm, uneven qualities of their hearts. I use ''un- 
even" wrongly perhaps. Their race partizanship is 
so intense that the Irish may be fiercely on your side 
so long as you are on their side, but diverge by so 
much as a laughing criticism of their own people 
and they are arrayed against you in a tumult of words. 

I met a young Dublin University man who was once 
17 247 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

a papist, now is no longer a papist, and will probably 
send for the priest and the holy oils when he hears the 
wings of Death. He asked me whether I had ever 
been granted an audience with the Holy Father, and 
I answered him as one practical American would speak 
to another. I told him that ^'I had tickets for Leo, 
but didn't get up." 

He clasped his hand to his forehead. "Oh, you 
Americans! The like of a circus! Tickets for Leo, 
tickets for Leo— and didn't get up!" 

But had he announced he had tickets for Leo it 
would have been all right. It was his Pope, and he 
could say what he liked about him. 

I determined that I would take no chances with 
my new Irish friend, although she showed a detached 
point of view as to the Irish question that encouraged 
agreement with her. I remember on that first after- 
noon our speaking of the patience of English crowds, 
how submissively they allowed themselves to be 
packed upon a sidewalk to watch a passing show in 
the street which only those at the curb would really 
see. It would not be so in Ireland, she had said. 
''It would not?" ''It would not," she replied. "Every 
man of them who couldn't see would be making a 
speech against those who could. By the time the 
King came along they would all be fighting, and no 
one would know that he had passed." 

"They are always fighting, aren't they?" I said, 
smiling agreeably. 

"They are not," with a flash of the eye. 

I had spoken of the crowds of Maundy Thursday 
who had packed around Westminster Abbey in the 
faint hope, perhaps, that the King's dole of sliver 
might be extended to others than the selected poor 

248 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

within. On this day I but stuck my nose in the 
Abbey, and saw over the heads of the people the lances 
of the Yeomen of the Guard as they escorted His 
Majesty toward a number of old folk slicked up for 
the occasion who were decided by the parish to be 
worthy of the gift. 

Just why this honor should fall upon the parish of 
Westminster I don't know (and where is Eastminster, 
by the way? And Middleminster? And Minster 
Center?), but I should think all the old 'uns of Lon- 
don would move into the neighborhood, and by a 
combination of extreme poverty and extreme piety 
hope for individual preferment before they die. For 
the Maundy Thursday dole will go on as long as 
British sovereigns endure, and every year the reporters 
will write of it just as they yearly chronicle the spring, 
the last snowfall, the first cuckoo, the Derby, the open- 
ing of the shooting season, ditto of Parliament, and 
the endless round of what has always been. The 
contemplation of these reportorial duties staring an 
English journalist in his morning face must make him 
more perfectly comprehend the Frenchman who cut 
his throat at the prospect of taking off his shoes and 
stockings every night and putting them on every 
morning. 

I like old customs, but this faint replica of the 
humble duties of our Lord is one that could be more 
honored in the breach than the observance. At least, 
I should imagine King George would feel that way, 
yet it could be worse for him. Among the few sover- 
eigns that are left upon the face of Europe some are 
busily engaged on Maundy Thursday scrubbing feet. 
I did not scrub feet, but I had a matinee for Lenten 
penance, and I edged out of the crowd nervously and 

249 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

sought the doorway leading from the cloisters, a sort 
of stage-door of the Abbey, through which the King 
•was to come out. It is the only entrance used by 
royalty that does not bother with a red carpet — even 
Buckingham Palace runs its strip down to the gravel. 
I speculated upon the possible indignation of the 
royalties within when their sole-leather would aston- 
ishingly conflict with cold stone. ''What! No red 
carpet!" an earlier monarch might have exclaimed. 
''Off with his head!" 

Yet even they would not have exclaimed it aloud. 
It is something for the scoffer of whatever gods there 
be to dwell upon: this fear of vain kings of the con- 
demnation of the Church, and of their penances when 
they flouted it, and of the deference they tremblingly 
paid to little priests of small beginnings who bravely 
attacked them. Even that man of earth, Henry VIII, 
dared not break away entirely from ecclesiastical 
forms, and had the Church of England all neatly 
established before moving out of the house of the 
Popes— and taking his wives with him. 

This fateful thought came to me as I waited for the 
King along with the photographers and a little knot 
of men and women, and with a wave of comic despair 
I realized that even the Church of England had for 
a background the love of man for woman. I find I 
have recorded in my line-a-day journal, "One might 
think on Maundy Thursday at Westminster I could 
escape this sex business, but if it hadn't been for 
Anne Boleyn there wouldn't have been any Abbey 
at all." 

It was very sweet and springlike in this court- 
yard, with the trim houses of ecclesiastics all about 
and neat maids going in and out the archway, as 

250 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

though there was no domestic problem for them, and 
heaven was their home. A whole ton of coal lumbered 
in, and we all looked at it enviously. I forbore to ask 
if it was to be a present to the King. Indeed it was 
the only ton of coal I have seen treated contemptu- 
ousl3^ For the chief detective, in a beautifully braided 
coat, said it couldn't wait there among the royal 
carriages, and off it rumbled, very hurt, under the 
impression that it was the real King Cole. 

I interrogated the old coachman of one of the royal 
carriages that remained triumphant, asking him if 
any one else ever painted their carriage with the deep- 
red body and scarlet lines of royalty, and he replied, 
''Never, madam," very fervently. ''But what if they 
would?" I pursued. And he gathered up his reins 
and drove his horses out of the area of such disturb- 
ing thoughts. 

Abashed bj^ the royal coachman, I merged myself 
in the little crowd who were whispering among them- 
selves in that hushed way people do when waiting 
for sovereigns. Two women were talking together 
about a third — oh, undoubtedly about a third, for 
the import of their words was mighty: "They can't 
afford another; they can't afford it!" 

"They couldn't afford the first — yet every spring—" 
She sounded a "tck-tck" of disapproval. It made me 
sorry for this third woman who wasn't there. Why 
is it, when all the wonders of spring are so welcome, 
'that a baby, the greatest wonder of all, can't be as 
eagerly watched for? Why can't all earth's greenery 
be as tenderly nurtured as the young trees in a city's 
park? What is a country's yearly forestr^^ bill and the 
yearly bill for that country's unwanted little ones? 
Again one speculates. 

251 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

The royal family were coming out. The coachmen 
removed their hats, still wonderfully manipulating the 
reins. The photographers advanced, lifting their 
bowlers also, and begged for pause. The family took 
leave of the Dean as the little cranks of the moving- 
picture apparatuses made history. The institution 
of the photographic machine is now quietly accepted 
as part of every ceremony. There is no longer sur- 
prise or bridling, or vexed impatience. We have 
washed feet, opened Parliament, become a Fish- 
monger or a Cloth Draper or a Mason, and now we 
stand for a minute while this process of absolute 
confirmation is being employed. 

Old fighting warriors who don't care twopence about 
their pictures stand submissively before going into 
battle, and the wounded lift their heads from their 
cots and take an interest with a dying smile. The 
only voices recently raised in protest were those at 
the Foundling Hospital when lusty-lunged babies 
roared in unison at a flashlight, while their own Queen 
Mary held the most indignant of them in her arms. 
When they are grown-up foundlings and view this 
moving picture — if indeed it is still moving — they 
will take shame of themselves at this unique display 
of concerted cavernous mouths. 

But that was the end of JNIaundy Thursday for me. 
I caught a taxi and reached the theater just as they 
were again growing anxious, so perhaps it was as well 
that only one member of the company cared to see 
the sights of London Town. Yet I had been but once 
before to the Abbey on this visit, for now that I was 
part of London I no longer sat in the Poets' Corner 
and tried to thinlc thoughts. On this occasion tickets 
admitted the American novelist and myself to the 

252 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

Poets' Corner, and we walked around the little door 
of the south transept by Parliament Yard. There 
was a great yellow motor at the door, from which an 
American woman married to a nobleman was de- 
scending. But most of us were on foot, and looking 
very much like what we were — Americans. For this 
was the day of the prayers for our dead. 

All through February and March various services 
had been held in memoriam. for men fallen in battle. 
A great gathering had been held at St. Paul's for the 
journalists and writers, and a lesser one at the Abbey 
for the British actors, which I had wanted mightily 
to attend. But that was the day we wore our make- 
ups through the noon hours while flashlight pictures 
were taken of om' play, and unresistingly we went to 
the theater, just as those six hundred fallen actors 
would have done had they been summoned. It was 
at least our line of duty. 

The church on the day for our dead was packed by 
a solemn mass of men and women from over the water. 
I didn't know there could be so many, but I under- 
stand that there were twenty thousand working here 
on various missions during the war. There was the 
glitter of admirals and generals before the high altar, 
and the brighter colors of the representatives of powers 
and potentates. Our soldiers and sailors filed in 
methodically, fine, grim boys, and I wondered how 
any one could be but glad that they were still alive; 
yet I have heard a man deplore that we Americans 
had not suffered more. Hasn't the world had its full 
quota of pain — can any one wish for a greater killing 
of any human beings or poor dumb beasts of any 
country — even their ally, America? 

The enormous dignity of the service filled me with 

253 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

awe, yet we of the United States, crude, new, anxious, 
were not unfitted to the wide spaces of a cathedral. 
Other pilgrims have bowed before this altar, and they 
were simple people, too. Never for centuries have they 
been turned away from this House of God, and on 
this day we were gathered to say a prayer, not for our- 
selves, but for the men who knew the wider spaces 
of our great out-of-doors. 

It is when I am in an ancient building of an older 
civilization than ours that always there recurs to me 
pictures of our open plains, our farthest mountains, 
and tall pines of the Northwest. For I find these 
buildings and these visions similar, not contrasting. 
Once I asked a Roman prince whom I met in a Wes- 
tern mining-camp if he did not honestly miss the 
pomp and age-old beauty of his father's house, and 
he said that he never missed them so long as he worked 
in the open and slept under the stars. 

Just so, in some teasing way, through the intoning 
of the service, the swell of the organ, the chant of the 
singers, my mind reverted to the army posts of the 
Far West, of the cool of the evening at the fringe of 
our deserts, of the morning light on our highest moun- 
tain peaks. It came insistently and comfortingly, as 
though the early makers of the Abbey could more 
understandingly embrace our unformed new nation 
than can these exquisite peoples of later years. 

The service drew to its close. From some place 
high, high up in the vaulted edifice British buglers 
sounded the Last Call for our American men. I 
may never hear more celestial music, yet the echo 
that came to my ears was the faint 'Haps" sounded 
over a sandy grave which — I could see quite plainly — 
Jay in soine gweet open place at home. 

254 




Chapter XVI 

FTER Maundy Thursday came, as inevitable as 
the seasons, Good Friday, variously observed 
by various people, and joyfully all mine, 
for in London on that day theaters are closed and 
I could roam through the hours without a watch in 
my hand. 

Did I go to church? No, I did not go to church. 
For it was spring, it was full-throated spring. The 
trees were green, the sun did shine, there were seats, 
wonderfully enough, on the top of a bus that led to 
Hampstead Heath, and Beechey and I went out to 
enjoy the crowd gathering for Easter Monday while 
they could yet be enjoyed. Easter Monday was a 
Bank Holiday, which I suppose, upon analysis, means 
that the banks are closed. Although up to this very 
moment I have interpreted "bank" as the kind 
whereon the wild thyme grows. As all London flies 
to these sweet slopes much more affectionately than 
they do to the granite buildings— even to draw money 
— it is not a very serious misreading of a national 
holiday. 

A crowd is good, but one can have too much of a 
good thing, and by Monday it would have been im- 
possible. Already one mother with a trail of crying 
children had found it too much. She was waiting at 
the Heath to pack them on to the bus as we descended. 
''Never agyne," she was exclauning as I helped the 

255 ■ 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

weeping ones on, ''never agyne. I says it every year." 
I thought how often we say ''Never agyne," every 
spring we say it, and when we have grown too old 
for the exclamation we feel the loss of that very ache 
in our hearts, and scratch around among the young 
for vicarious romances. 

Oh, I was broken on the wheel by the time spring 
came singing into England, for one cannot love life 
and not want those in life to be loved each after his 
own fashion and according to his years. But I had 
to come to England to find that out. When I was 
not planning a love-affair for Beechey I was sizing 
up the landlady, with very little to encourage me. 
Mrs. Hacking, when not mourning for her husband, 
was — so the village of London gossiped — carrying on 
with a potman who is the gentleman wot washes 
the glasses at a pub — the pub where my shillings were 
changed to pennies for the gas-meter every noon. 
I was enjoying this form of romantic activity, and 
knew I must no longer oppose it, for the fruit of the 
tree is knowledge, and I had eaten of the fruit. And 
there is a certain pleasure to be derived from dis- 
seminating for the good of others that Avhicli you 
yourself have acquired through various painful bites 
of the apple. 

Now, the disseminating of wisdom can be a stodgy 
business, made up of don'ts to be found in the back of 
any dictionary, or it may be a real exercise of sym- 
pathies, and therein lies whatever of the game there 
is for us old 'uns. It is something to say, with the 
esthetic Hedda Gabler, if you have been busting up 
Love's Young Dream, at least you have done it 
beautifully. 

The opportunities were rich on Good Friday. No 

256 



AN AMP:RICANS LONDON 

sooner had we reached the first ''Cokernut-Shy" 
than we ran across a baronet we knew. It was no 
place to meet a baronet, according to novels, but he 
was taking his little dog out for a walk, so that it 
could grow accustomed to its muzzle. A new edict 
has gone forth this spring that all dogs must be 
muzzled all the time. With the Briton's trained ac- 
ceptance of a ruling the people stormed the shops 
upon the dogs' last glad day, great queues were 
waiting for muzzles, and proud canines, like our Poms, 
sat up as late as midnight waiting for the exhausted 
muzzle man to come and measure them. 

''We have our muzzles made to order," I heard 
them barking to the little wirj^-haired fellow next 
door, who wore a hand-me-down. Even their fond 
mistress stopped their boasting, for we were all 
troubled over the dog next door. It was rumored his 
folks never took his muzzle off, as it was too much 
bother, and my kind landlady was conniving to buy 
him through a medium unknown to her neighbor. 
But this indifference to the M^elfare of dumb beasts 
is more rare in England than in America. A driver 
on the street can never lay a lash across the back of 
his horse without a cry of protest from the pavement. 
Old ladies at first attack him, and dignified gentlemen 
afterward, with badges under their coats. They may 
beat their wives, according to old English law, but 
there is no law permitting the beating of animals. 

Yet, if they are fond of their dogs, they must be 
proportionately considerate of their wives, and it oc- 
curred to me — hopeful as Young April — while we 
strolled around with the baronet, he stopping con- 
tinually to caress his little dog, which had an idea it 
was being punished with facial solitary confinement, 

257 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

that Beechey would do well to marry one of these 
Englishmen of birth. They are accustomed to queer 
birds. Artists were always in attendance at the 
court of English sovereigns; the literary man dedi- 
cated his book to a titled patron, who graciously ac- 
cepted it and bestowed a few guineas on the scribe. 
Portrait commissions were as ingenuously procured. 
There was no contempt in this recognition of talent 
by a purse. It was not thrown to a minion. It 
pleased the noble to have men of arts and letters about 
him. He would probably accept even the fish har- 
pooned by a hair-pin, for, through the centuries, he 
had been accustomed to have these fish-harpooners 
at his table. And oh, best of all English traits! 
he, unlike the New York business man, would not 
attempt to make the artist over into a nobleman. 
He would be the nobleman for the family — he would 
want to be. 

I looked at our baronet strolling along with Beechey. 
For centuries he had strolled, and the Lord knows 
Beechey could stroll, too. In a faint way I was pre- 
serving my Theory of Opposites, even as I yielded a 
point or two in the direction of aimless pedic correla- 
tions. I was very happy, and went at the Cokernut- 
Shy with a fierceness of attack that amused my friends. 
They little knew that I had arranged with myself 
that if I could hit three cocoanuts out of five, they 
were going to marry each other. 

That I did not hit any at all was not entirely dis- 
couraging. I had chosen a Shy that was not pros- 
perous in appearance. Its patronage was slim, and 
there was no air of success in the monkey faces on the 
nuts. They did not grin. Why, at a fair, does the 
public patronize one booth and pass by another offer- 

258 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

ing the same wares? The sign of Cokernut-Shies was 
just as alluringly painted across this alley as the 
-others, the black-robed woman in attendance more 
appealing than the rougher men at the thriving booth 
next door. Even the coster-girl farther along, in 
lovely pinks and mauves, with a small round waist 
and full bosom, was not doing a good business. These 
instances make one believe in luck, and if in luck, in 
horseshoes, and hats on beds, and peacock feathers; 
then the Evil Eye, and on down to witches, with ap- 
proval for their dire fate, for if you believe in one you 
can believe in all. Or is there a real cosmic force that 
arrests the feet of the passer-by at one Cokernut-Shy 
and sends him indifferently past the next? 

I was glad to lose to my woman in mourning, al- 
though I was sorry not to marry Beechey to the 
baronet. I decided I would arrange it later with a 
crystal-gazer, and in the mean time, as the proprietress 
had won my silver, she was willing to talk to me, 
and I was soothed by her acknowledgment that they 
all made some money out of the Shy, even last year, 
when cocoanuts cost tliirty-six cents apiece. Still — 
with a roll of the eye — some did better than others. 
She was carrying on her 'usband's business. ''The 
Somme got 'im— blast it!" And I suppose that gentle 
river will ever be pictured to many thousands as a 
hungry monster greedy for blood. 

Before we went on to ''Little Mary," which, for 

the sake of the baronet, I hastened to say had nothing 

to do with our stomachs, I asked the proprietress why 

the signs were all spelled "cokernut" and she replied 

because they were cokernuts. So I suppose the cockney 

must be conscious of his own accent,' and when he 

reads at all must read as he pronounces. I myself 

259 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

recognize the letter "r" I put in wash if, as Oscar 
Wilde says, ''if I listen attentively," but there has 
been no inclination to slip the oral evidence of the 
Middle West into the written word. I don't write 
"warsh-day" — it's enough to have to say it. 

And that takes me off at such a tangent that I 
may never get back to ''Little Mary, only twenty- 
six inches tall, and alive." But it has occurred to 
me a hundred times that any two nations who read 
the same language, if that language is their own, 
should never be alien to each other. Let us take an 
English novel written by one of the splendid school 
of young writers over here at present. That novel 
is broad in its appreciation of the pain of the world 
— not of the pain of England, but of all countries. 
The characters talk as we in America do, barring 
the slang which emanates always from the conditions 
of a narrow environment. They conduct themselves 
as we do, laugh over the same situations, weep over 
the same losses. We read the phrasing to ourselves 
in — yes — in American, and it is real to us. 

Yet, when we Americans meet the English we are 
confounded by the rising inflection of their voices. 
We put down their accent, possibly developed by 
climatic conditions, to a self-sufficiency that maddens 
us. We read into their soaring voices a superiority 
of ideas which we, a newer nation and conscious of 
our newness, resent. We called it "side" once, 
"swank" it would be in this day. Personally, I have 
no patience with this. If we listened more to what 
the English say and less to the way they say it, we 
would be obliged to admit that we were at one in the 
deeper phases of life. 

To this day, when I become overpowered by seem- 

260 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

ingly superficial English intonations, I fly home to 
read Wells and George, Richard Pryce and Stacy 
Aumonier, Swimierton and Bennett, and all the young 
men whose pages faithfully reflect the present-day 
Enghsh values, and yet whose ideas on the printed 
leaf can be transcribed easily into the Hoosier dialect 
of the reader. Try it. For, as I grow more and more 
fond of English life, I offer this for your digestion. 
It isn't their fault they are a thousand years old, any 
more than it is mine that I say '^warsh" for 'Vash." 
They are worse off than I am, for I'll get over '' warsh," 
but they'll only add to their thousand years. 

The baronet, who didn't want his dog to bark at 
dwarfs — he was accustomed to tall Englishmen — did 
not pay twopence, as we did, to see "Little Mary, 
only twenty-six inches tall, and alive." He waited 
outside and watched those who were rich enough circle 
about on the painted animals of the merry-go-rounds. 
He was not alone in watching, a crowd of those who 
had not the sum to cater to this new form of profiteer- 
ing (a shilling a go, hif you please) forgathered with 
him and scornfully yelled "Munitions!" to the 
wealthy ones who could so spend twelvepence. Of 
course the baronet did not yell, any more than he did 
not offend us by paying fourpence for us to see 
"Little Mary." That would not have been baronial. 
American money went to the side-shows, and I had 
sixpence all ready besides to give to the little creature. 

But the little creature didn't want it, as Mary was 
a tiny pony, twenty-six inches high, and alive, and we 
crept out with the guilty look on our faces which 
simple, kindly people always wear when they are 
deceived. A knot of girls with no pence to spare for 
their fairing had gathered outside to see what effect 

261 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

the peep-show had upon us. ''Is it wuth it?" one girl 
asked, and while it was only four cents, that meant a 
great deal to her, and she was advised to remain 
away. Still, I don't know why a charming normal 
pony shouldn't be as ''wuth" it as a hideous abnormal 
dwarf, but we must have our senses shocked for real 
enjoyment. The jaunt ended in a taxi, with the 
baronet gone off on a real walk of about ten miles, 
and a glass of light refreshment enjoj^ed by the 
chauffeur as well as ourselves at The Spaniards. The 
driver brought the ale to us and as we sipped it— he 
gulped his — informed us that "Dickings" had writ- 
ten a book there. I think he wrote the book near by, 
but it was a pleasant locality to do a book, and as 
they say Dickens loved his characters, I suppose the 
combination of inn and loved ones made the labor of 
writing fairly endurable. I cannot imagine any one 
liking to write a book, even when it is full of Me, with 
the I's flying along like telegraph-poles, and I sym- 
pathize with Mr. St. John Ervine, who slaps down 
"The End" and cries: "There! I am through with 
you, you brutes!" 

But it was uncommonly lovely upon the Heath, 
with London like a scarred bowl of dullest metal 
beneath us, and my heart swelled with gratitude that 
I had been able to visit many lands, and then salve 
my conscience for the expense incurred by writing 
about them. It turns a writer on travel subjects 
cold to think what a bore he may become. There 
was a man on shipboard once, the kind you never 
meet on dry land, fortunately. He was a buyer of 
chinaware, and he said his greatest delight was going 
to call on folks in his little home town who had never 
been able to go anywhere, and tell them all about the 

262 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

pleasant things he had seen. I can imagine how 
thoroughly he must have been hated, can see the stifled 
ya"\vns, and smell the lamp burning low. ''Well, well," 
the hostess says, with a sort of upward movement 
of her body in an effort to suggest an evacuation of 
chairs and the ensuing departure of the guest. But 
at the risk of having this very book thrown at me, I 
cannot but wish that all Americans could have at 
least one spring in England. 

Not that it is any more beautiful than our spring, 
but the passionate appreciation of the people for the 
tender green, for the repainted chairs in the park, the 
change of bathing hours in the Serpentine, the first 
straw hat, prove them to be as emotional as are we, 
even if it takes the sun to draw it out. And if two 
nations read the same literature and enjoy the same 
emotions, they are not really very far apart. 

It was the baronet who started these reflections. 
He had begged Beechey if he could be impertinent 
and followed it up by asking her if she liked Wilson. 
Beechey, being patriotic without analysis, promptly 
said she did because he was her President. I said I 
hadn't at first, but the longer I stayed in England the 
more I was growing to like him. "You enrage me so 
by your opposition, I cannot help it," I completed. 

''But he's always talkin' about ideals," from the 
baronet. 

"Well, why shouldn't he?" answered Beechey. 
"The trouble with you English is you don't believe 
in anything you haven't got." 

In astonishment, dog and baronet stopped as one 
man. "Not have ideals? Certainly we have 'em; 
we believe in 'em. We've had 'em for so long and 
believe in 'em so much that they're nothing new to us. 

18 263 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

We take 'em for granted. We don't feel it's decent 
to talk about 'em. It would be like taking off your 
garments before a crowd." 

Dog, baronet, Beechey, and myself walked on. 
There was something in this. 

But come over and see them in the spring. The 
barriers are down when the rain falls, and they say 
nothing. I actually saw a baby in a terrific hail- 
storm in April holding up its face without a whimper 
to the cutting of the stones. It was probably patri- 
otically crying to itself in baby-talk, "Good old 
England!" But when the spring sun shines they 
meet upon the street and burst into ecstasies; they 
radiate good wdll toward each other. They don't 
know it, and they would be awfully ashamed if they 
ever heard of it, but they are taking off their garments 
of emotion before a crowd. 

How many Good Fridays can the reader recall? 
I have experienced forty of them — and over. One 
was at St. Peter's in Rome; one gathered with the 
multitude at Riverside for the pilgrimage up the 
momit; one shamelessly playing an extra matinee 
in a Canadian town, making profit out of our Lord's 
agony; one motoring through a wide, storm-swept 
country as desolate as Calvary, by the side of one 
who is now gone. Yet the Good Friday I remember 
most clearly was spent posing in a New York studio 
that I might add to my slender student allowance. 
All day I posed — exceedingly distressful to nie; and 
for lunch we had two little tins of beans and hot- 
cross buns sent in from a delicatessen near by. 
Gone is the picture, the painter, and demolished the 
old studio, but every Good Friday when I eat my 
hot-cross buns the dingy scene rises before me, and 

264 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

that remote day seems dearer to me than probably 
it really was. 

While there will not be so many Good Fridays to 
recomit from this year on, I think I shall not forget 
my English one, and that these two will be unblm'red 
by the passing of time. For on the end of this day 
in London I was able to apply to the comfort of 
some one younger than myself a sort of crystalliza- 
tion of the knowledge gained of earlier Good Fridays, 
and all the days between. The school of experience 
takes no holidays or holy-days. 

I was to dine with a young man at the desirable 
hour of eight, instead of dashing into the black cavern 
of a theater at seven, seeing no more of the soft twi- 
light. A woman does not appreciate dining at that 
hour unless she can never do so from one week's end 
to another. There is a thrill in the wearing of a long- 
tailed frock with glittering things in the hair. There 
is a newness all over again in driving off with a young 
man who is to be your host, even though you know 
he is going to tell you all about his young lady. Your 
hair is gray in which the ornaments glitter, therefore 
it is your pleasure to hear about the young lady. 
If it is not your pleasure you are an unhappy old 
woman. i 

My young man — the young lady's young man — 
had a touch of melancholy about him. Yet one 
could put down melancholy to spring zephyrs stirring 
the young heart, the kind you dare make a jest of, 
and I dared make a jest of it. We were just going 
into Hyde Park, I remember, for we had some time 
to drive about, and the young man behaved remark- 
ably, for he clutched my hands, but impersonally 
and as one seizes driftwood in a raging sea. Then 

205 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

he told me that he was going to die, with several 
years of pain ahead of him before he died. That 
had been the verdict of the physicians. 

I am sure, I am absolutely sure, it did not first 
occur to me that this news would spoil our dinner. 
That came after. After an inability to see this vibrant 
boy as any one concerned with death. 

All sorts of thoughts came between. An immediate 
wonder, as I looked out upon the wistful youthfulness 
of the trees, if he could be getting any solace out of 
the green. Or was it terrible to him, since he might 
not witness the spectacle of spring again? I did im- 
mediately appreciate how my conversational topics 
would be limited. Could I tell him of Little Mary; 
would the ideals of a baronet be important to a dying 
man? Can you turn to one who tells you he has re- 
ceived his death-warrant and ask him what he thinks 
of the latest Maugham play? To be sure, all of us 
enter the world with our death-warrant in our tiny 
claws. But we have not yet learned to read the sum- 
mons, and as we grow into lusty life, death may be 
for the next man, but not for us. 

On the other hand, I could not go talking through 
a holiday dinner of his approaching end. It would 
be too fantastic. Nor could I say, '^I am sorry you 
are going to die," and then praise the fish. Yet, 
on another hand — on my third hand — since this din- 
ner was arranged especially for me, I must in all 
decency say something about it. 

I did suggest, as we entered the court of the hotel, 

that we give up the meal altogether, and that he come 

home with me to cry his heart out if he wanted to. 

But he looked at me tragically and blurted out, "Oli, 

I say, it's all ordered." And then almost hysterical 

866 



AN AMERICANS LONDON 

desperation swept over me, for, in some way, I must 
enjoy all the dishes, must eat them whether I wanted 
to or not, yet appear immaterial in my interest. And, 
most horrible of all, now that the first shock was 
over I began to realize that I was hungry and could 
eat everything with gusto! 

There was nothing of death in the air, although the 
beautiful young Guardsmen who were filling the res- 
taurant had been shoulder to shoulder with it for 
four years. They carry with them only the reckless- 
ness that accompanies an existence which may speedily 
cease to be. Once upon a time these men of birth 
would not have entered a public dining-place with the 
startlingly pretty women whom they now openly 
affect. But this very rashness savors of life, eager 
life in that room of soft lights and music and agreeable 
food. Life came in at the open windows, the new 
growth of green branches crisscrossed a sky as rosy 
as dawn. Old Father Thames himself, lying below 
us, put off his mud-gray colors and caught the youth- 
ful tinge of overhanging clouds. 

I prayed to the gods, and a very small one with 
bu'd-wings and a bow and arrow fluttered down to 
help me out. Dinner, after all, was not a failure, 
for the right subject came to us which had place at 
this strange banquet; a subject which will have place 
in a death-chamber, or a christening, or through all 
the humble offices of the day's regime. This boy 
and I talked of love — his love and my knowledge of 
it, gained by bites from the apple in prehistoric days. 

He had done some thinking since the verdict of the 
doctors. He had mapped out his life and hers, and 
that he had mapped out hers, had dared to arrogate 
to himself the right to do so, was the matter under 

267 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

discussion, under contention through the dehcate 
courses of the meal. I don't recall all we said, but 
salient points jut out in my memory. 

"I've written to her," said the boy. ''She is out in 
Egypt with her father." 

"I'm glad you wrote. She'll come right back." 

He shook his head. "She won't." 

"You don't doubt her?" 

A soft look came into his eyes. "Never! But — she 
doesn't know." 

"Doesn't know what?" 

"That I'll be going west." 

I am glad to record that the morsel of fish with the 
exquisite sauce lost its flavor momentarily. "What 
did you tell her?" I demanded. 

My host was proud of what he told her, which was 
nothing at all except that he no longer loved her. 
He had di,smissed her. There was no cruelty in this 
man. His face was haggard with the conflict that had 
gone on within him before he had disposed of her 
love, briefly, by letter. Yet I looked upon him as 
an enemy alien, an alien to women. "Who are you 
to regulate her life?" 

"I am her fond lover, that's all. I love her enough 
to give her up. I must love her enough to know what 
is best for her." 

' ' British ! " I ground between my teeth. "She won't 
believe you." 

"I made it plain enough." 

"Plain! There is just one way a woman would 
translate that letter; she'll read another woman 
into it." 

"I don't mind that." 

I was annoyed, although the entree that I was just 

268 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

attacking was most soothing. " You don't mind it — 
who are you?" 

"I'm the one that's dying," 

"And she's the one that's turned aside." 

"Would she want to hear I'm dying?" 

"Yes," bhnitly, without pause. 

He sneered at me. "She is different from you. 
You are one of those brisk Americans." 

I continued eating up the eritree. It was too good 
to get angry over. "She is not different; she is the 
same. That's something I've learned with years. A 
man's love and a woman's love is measured by the 
same rod in every country — yes, and by the same 
system. I wish governments would take that more 
into account — they'd get along better. You've got 
to believe me — take some things for granted. A 
woman cannot be going on fifty, with nothing to 
show for her briskness, as you call it, but a lot of 
blank pages. Now the point is, she's got a right to 
decide for herself." 

"In all decency she'd come on and watch me till 
I die." 

"Well, let her; that's her affair." 

"Ruin her life?" 

I very nearly yelled at him: "Again, who are you 
to decide what would ruin her life? Do you think 
those hours by your bedside would be any worse than 
those hours of shaken faith, and renewed hope, and 
woman's eternal analyses ; worse than her wanderings 
in mental darkness through those blazing Egyptian 
days?" 

"She'll get over it out there." 

"Of course she'll get over it. She'll get over your 

death, too — don't flatter yourself she won't — and the 

269 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

strain of the long hours by your bedside — since j^ou 
seem to insist she'd have to suffer them. Personally, 
I don't think you're going to die. The dying aren't 
so infernally cruel." 

His voice broke. ''God knows I am doing the best 
I can for her." 

"Yes, God knows, but she doesn't. She might get 
some inkling of it if you do die. And even then she'll 
probably think there was another woman, so she'll 
have two griefs in her heart instead of one." 

The boy looked up at me with the first glimmering 
of respect for my theories in his eyes. ''She'll suffer 
twice as much, you mean? On what do you base all 
this? I'm read}^ to listen." 

We were not at the poulet en casserole. As befitted 
my years I was able to attack this chicken and enjoy 
it, even as a sort of miasma of old misery swept 
over me in the recounting of "those beautiful days, 
those beautiful days when I was so unhappy." Ah, 
I never thought during those days that the unhappi- 
nesses, not the beauty of them, would have a value ! 

It was a long course and quite a long story. I had 
eaten all the chicken before I was through and the 
asparagus with the sauce hollandaise. He kept in- 
terrupting, and side issues were fiercely contended, 
but the talk went something like this: "I knew — 
somebody — once. He said to me one day, ' I love you, 
for I am jealous of you.' Then he went away for an 
hour, as we had arranged, and I never saw him again, 
except when there were crowds of people about. 
Not for years, at least — not until it didn't matter. 

"He wrote a letter, too — he closed our accounts 

like a ledger. I wasn't dismissed like a servant, but 

like a secretary. No. 1 : 'I am remaining in the coun- 

270 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

try indefinite^.' No. 2:. 'The country is no place 
for you.' No. 3: 'Some day I may go into this with 
you — not now.' 

"Why shouldn't he have gone into it with me? 
Why should not I have seen the cards? We had played 
a game together. Why should I be allowed only the 
backs of the cards while he saw the faces? He was a 
card-thief — a card-sharper in life. In my life." 

''Did you hate him?" 

"Not at first. You can't hate all at once. You 
have to suffer a long time. Besides, you don't want to 
hate. Fond pictures must grow faint, for a woman 
feeds on the past longer than a man does. I clung 
to the pictures, for there was nothing to take their 
place." 

"Did you cry?" (Thinking of his girl, crying in 
Egypt, of course. He wasn't caring about me.) 

"I was too confused. Eveiy minute I thought the 
situation would be cleared up. But I was lonel}^ 
Were you ever lonely?" 

His lips were white. "I think I'm going to be." 

"She'll be lonely out in Egypt, too. But you'll 
be more lonely in the city here, because there are so 
many people about you don't want. Once, I remem- 
ber, I was standing on the corner of Fifth Avenue 
and Thirty-fifth Street — just standing there. There 
must have been a million people up and down that 
street. I suppose I was in a sort of mental daze — be- 
wilderment does that when long continued — and for 
an instant I actually thought I was alone in that 
brilliant street, that the whole length was mine, no 
people, or motors, or vans, or buses. It was empty 
just because one man had left me nothing to hold on 

to. That frightened me. I tried to get over it then," 

271 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

"I suppose you thought it was a woman, too?" 

''I thought it was a different woman every night. 
But after a while that didn't make any difference. 
The point was, I had a right to know whether it 
was a woman — to know what was back of it all. 
Why, we had been going to share our whole life to- 
gether! For his sake there wasn't any condition in 
existence I wouldn't have accepted if he had been 
frank with me. I was willing never to see him again 
if he didn't want to see me. A woman doesn't really 
want a man if he's over it himself. But the worst 
pain of all, after a while, was knowing that he wasn't 
any good or he wouldn't have written that letter. 
I had been loving some one who wasn't any good. 
He couldn't even live as a charming memory — all 
through his clumsy writing." 

The boy was snared by this. He wanted to remain 
charming, yet he fought for himself. ''Your friend — 
er — his motives — After all, they may not have 
been — oh, well — as fine as mine." 

I had finished my chicken, and gave the little frame 
a pat with my knife as the waiter took it away. 
"Good-by, old friend," I addressed the little poulet. 
The waiter moved off, scandalized. He little knew 
what bones I had been picking. "Not as fine as you, 
did you say? Well, I haven't seen your letter — other- 
wise just the same." 

"He was ill, then?" 

"That's all— just ill." 

"And you learned the truth when he died?" 

"Oh, he didn't die. He got well, as you are prob- 
ably going to do. Got well, and after coming back to 
the world, tried to stumble out excuses to an indiffer- 
ent ear — the poor oaf!" 

272 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

The boy was very wretched over the possibihty of 
his living. I followed this up: "If she gets that 
letter, and you get well, you'll be ridiculous for the 
rest of your life." 

He turned on me savagely. ''Well, what do you 
want me to do? Shoot myself, to make sure?" 

In turn I rapped so sharply with my spoon upon 
my ice-cream plate that two waiters and a captain 
leaped to my side, distressed at my method of call. 
*'I want you to send that girl a cable and tell her 
not to open that fool letter. She'll open it, of course, 
just the same; but follow it up with another letter 
and tell her the truth. However, don't take a boat 
out — you'll cross on the way." 

He bounded to his feet. ''We'll go now and send 
it. Thank you, oh, thank you! You don't want your 
ice, do you? It looks beastly." 

"Yes, I do," I returned with spirit. "You go, and 
I'll eat both ices." 

He wove in and out among the tables, stepped on 
a lady's train and made no apology. The waiter in 
a horrid silence in time supplemented my host's ice 
for my empty plate. A moon, full and smiling, looked 
in at the Guardsmen and the pretty ladies, and myself 
sitting there complacently alone — eating, eating. 

I looked at the moon. "If it hadn't been for 
you, I would never have got into that old mess," I 
reproved. 

The moon retorted, "Then if it hadn't been for 
me, you could never have got this boy out of his 
present difficulty." 

In the words of Mrs. Wren: "Oh, dear; oh, deario!" 



Chapter XVII 

THE little four-wheeler passed out of my even- 
ings Easter week, and I took to the Tube, 
partly from a desire to see more of life and 
partly in an effort to prove to Mrs. Hacking that I 
was of limited means. Our petty cash expenses had 
grown from a slight irritation into a grievance, 
although the ragged accoimt-book was perfectly bal- 
anced and the entries therein mounting but necessi- 
ties. Mrs. Hacking continued my adoring and re- 
spectful servant, even standing up for me before our 
betters, before footmen and such appendages of rank 
as occasionally came to our door. 

A wonderful old dowager would now and then call 
upon my landlady, in a barouche, with the kind of a 
step that looks like a shovel. I can't imagine how the 
aristocrat of the two-bottle days ever got safely on and 
off these slippery devices, and "Watch your step" 
must have been bom in the Georgian period. The 
dowager was welcome, as she brought plovers' eggs to 
the landlady, who, after her guest had gone, would bring 
them down to me. They were always hard-boiled and 
I assume that the plover is a very fiery bird. 

The English have a charming way of sharing the 
beauties of life. They will work themselves up into 
a lather of rage over an extra bath with the geyser, 
then send you down a cup of fresh China tea in an 

old, old china cup, or lay a spray of sprmg flowers 

274 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

on the table and slip quickly from the room. And 
these acts of courtesy are so deftly accomplished, 
whereas their financial operations, at least in private 
life, are so often bungled, that it must be they are 
not really meant for business. The Europeans are as 
greedy as any of us, and since they charge us with 
super-commercialism, I should think they might do 
well to emulate our methods, and display what I dare 
to call a grace in business deahngs. 

It is time for some American to write a book on 
"The Gentle Art of Making Money." I suppose, 
since he would be an American, he would not call it 
by that title. It would be called, "Don't Be a Piker," 
for the more one contrasts the business methods of 
our country with that of older nations the more one 
finds a beauty in the vast conceptions of the business 
mind, which has as distinct a value as a bibelot. We 
do not pike. We are supposed to be the people who 
make money with the greatest ease, who care only 
for making money, w^ho know all about doing it; 
yet an American rarety haggles over a small sum, as 
will a m.an of almost any other nationality. A few 
moldy precepts must cling to the European business 
mind. "Look after the pence and the pound will 
take care of itself," and so forth. But Americans 
look very little at the pence, yet they thrive com- 
mercially. We are despised for our prodigality in 
European countries, even as the Europeans seek to 
take advantage of us. But the advantage, figuratively 
speaking, is only in pennies, and the American, out 
for a good time, grants them the small coin — and 
keeps his dollars. 

Just so did my landlady show a mad acti"\aty over 

the inventory of the dishes in our kitchen, I had a 

275 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

terrible hour in the lower regions, acknowledging that 
certain plates were perfect, while she honestly wrote 
down in a blank-book that certain others were vari- 
ously nicked, cracked deeply, cracked slightly, or 
scrotched (whatever "scrotched" is). Also how many 
wooden spoons there were, and what was the condi- 
tion of the enamel of the stewpans. ''But you must 
expect some wear-and-tear on these things! That's 
what I'm paying for," I bleated to her, longing to get 
back to my fire. 

''Yet we must have an inventory, mustn't we? " 
After all, I never did have one. She kept the only 
copy, so it would not have held in a court of law, 
for she could have changed the condition of the dishes, 
with not a "scrotch" on any of them — which would 
have cost me a great deal of money — three or four 
dollars! And the most interesting detail of my land- 
lady's business activities has been her generous refusal 
ever to send me a bill for such plates that were 
really scrotched after entering the reckless service of 
Gladys and Mrs. Hacking. It is the kind of deed that 
goes with plovers' eggs, China tea, and daffodils. 

The eggs take me back to the dowager's footman, 
who stood by the door, while Mrs. Hacldng, out 
cooling her headache in the area, would call up to 
him reassuring messages about me. "I work for an 
actress," I heard her say, "but she is all right," and 
the footman looked relieved, since his mistress was 
within my four walls. Yet being "all right" piqued 
me. It sounded very dull, and that may have started 
the only approach to the kind of indiscretion which 
should rightly accompany spring through all its vari- 
ous coquettings. I shall endeavor to withhold the 
confession until the end of the chapter, with an effort 

276 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

to observe the climaxes, although, naturally, one of 
my age is eager to talk about any such deflections 
from the straight and narrow. 

It came from London being so small. We are apt 
to put down to Fate any meeting at the crossroads, 
when Fate really has nothing to do with it. The 
roads cross, he living down one road because of the 
view, and she down another as the house had two 
bath-rooms. And they meet at the crossroads be- 
cause the roads cross. I managed a train at about 
eleven-thirty because my work was over, and he took 
the same train as he had written his editorial and was 
going home. I may say that we always went home 
as separate entities. And that any one, no matter 
how ancient, withstood this business of coupling which 
goes on in the Tube proves that there is something in a 
Middle- West upbringing, after all. For again I found, 
as I became an underground traveler, that the one 
phase of life which you cannot escape in England is 
love-making. It is largely accomplished out-of-doors, 
because out-of-doors belongs to the people. A beau- 
tiful Englishwoman exclaimed to me not long ago 
— as we sat together on a house balcony, watching 
some sort of pageantry — over this frank exhibition 
of Cupid's wounds in a London crowd. ''Why don't 
they go inside?" she laughed. 

"Because they haven't any inside to go to," I 

answered, endeavoring to explain everj^thing, as usual. 

"For generations girls weren't allowed followers to 

come to the houses, so they did their love-making in 

country lanes and city streets, on buses and penny 

steamers, and under the big trees of the parks. They 

are accustomed to it now. I feel sorry for them, having 

to share their love-affairs with the world." 

277 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

''I should think they would see that the nicest girls 
don't spoon in public," she continued to argue. 

''But they aren't the nicest girls; they're from the 
stratum that for years have had no life offered them 
of being anything but what they are. They've been 
told they must keep within their station. Why 
shouldn't they have some of the fun of their station 
along with the dinginess of it? What intrigues me, 
as I pass through London streets, full of lovers, is 
the possible picture of what is going on in all the 
drawing-rooms on the other side of the window-boxes. 
A people as highly sexed — " 

"Highly sexed!" Her eyes turned to the interior 
of the drawing-room, where nicely spoken, wholly 
correct men and women were taking tea. "Who says 
that?" 

"Other nations say it," I responded, "and patho- 
logical journals. It is awfully puzzling, but it's so. 
Ask any woman who's been the round of the world 
who makes love most delightfully and she will tell 
you it's an Englishman. Why, you all recognize it, 
but you won't admit it. Even the park commission- 
ers recognize it. Look at the chairs in the parks, all 
set out in twos. They come out every spring just as 
sure as lambs." 

"I don't see where you find all this." 

"Well, you find a lot of it in the London Tubes. 
After I have made my way through the crowd of 
love-makers at the Piccadilly Tube station, gone 
down in the lifts with those who haven't wrenched 
themselves apart, sat on the solitary bench of the 
platform with a couple or two as they wait for the 
trains, watched the smart ones being casual and those 
less fashionable not caring when once they get on the 

278 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

trains — by that time the whole Tube system seems 
to vibrate romance like the hills of Tuscany." 

She shrugged her shoulders pleasantly, as they 
shrug off topics here, which concludes the matter 
alwaj^s. '^I am glad some one gets something com- 
prehensive out of the Tube sj^stem," she said. 

Then I laughed, too, and didn't tell her all the 
things I got out of the system, or she would say I 
was over here to strengthen the Entente Cordiale. 
For while she was an Englishwoman, and ''highly 
sexed" startled her, she would give an attentive ear 
to dissertations on Love, whereas any expressions on 
my part of the thrills the London Tubes give me would 
bore her. 

I like the enormity of the Tube's execution and its 
great usefulness. I like its perfect clarity in the 
posted directions, its platforms free from filth, the 
orderly queues waiting their turn at entering the 
trains — the absence of irritation, the good manners, 
as toes are stepped on. I like the escalator at Oxford 
Circus (and from what I have seen on these stairs it 
might quite well be called an osculator), with placards 
imploring you not to sit down on the steps. I like 
the posters on the walls. My name looks at me, but 
I do not recognize the lettering as anything of mine. 
But there are others not of the theater which change 
with the seasons. 

For little homilies are preached to the people as 
to the best manners in Tubes, and, contrary to those 
at home, are left unsigned. ''An obstructor is a selfish 
person," we are told, and we have a picture of a homely 
man blocking up the way. Another gives a bird's- 
eye view of a train with selfish people refusing to 
move up into the center of the car. The "system" 

19 279 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

could carry twenty more to a car, or eighty more 
on every train of four cars, if every one would be un- 
selfish. And following this revelation there is another 
bird's-eye view of happy people disposed evenly 
throughout the car on that halcyon daj'' when we 
observe the golden rule. The modesty of the esti- 
mate as to the increased number that the car would 
accommodate amuses a New-Yorker. We would jam 
in two hundred where they take in twenty — yes, with 
everybody selfish. 

When spring came, this effort to improve public 
manners gave place to the names of country stretches 
that could be reached by Tube, the posters headed 
by verse from Keats and Shelley and Wordsworth. 
It was very hard for a woman traveling soberly down 
to a matinee on a sunny day not to give her under- 
study the chance for which she had been praying, and 
go on to the end of the line to these sweet open spaces. 
Once I did break bounds, and stayed away from an 
entirely unnecessary rehearsal to visit Kew Gardens, 
and had there been any dire consequences I should 
have sued the Tube corporation for urging me to 
''go down to Kew in lilac-time." 

This is, practically, an underground chapter (and 
the set of mole I rashly bought one day may or may 
not have been the result of my life beneath the earth), 
but it is fair to the Tube to touch a little on what it 
leads to, since the mere business of traveling on it 
is not as thrilHng a procedure to every one as it is 
to me. A number of us keep moving on in life for 
the sake of the destination. 

Spring was well advanced on the day I should 
have been at rehearsal and went to Kew Gardens 
instead. The bluebell dell had dried up like a little 

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AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

shallow lake, and the rhododendrons and azaleas 
were in full bloom. God was in His heaven, well 
represented by singing birds; there was the smell of 
cut grass in the wide alleys. Since there are no vehicles 
allowed in the most lovely of all gardens, and you do 
not have to get out of the way of anything, there is 
a serenity about it which gives time for undivided 
attention to the beauty of the three hundred acres 
over which you may wander. For that matter, you 
can walk where you please in any of England's public 
parks, and you can lie down on the warm (or wet) 
grass and go to sleep without fear of a policeman 
poking you in the back and advising you to roll on, 
or roll over, or something. Yet the grass does not 
greatly suffer from the millions of Londoners who 
must take a park in lieu of country, nor do the flowers 
and bushes grow ragged from depredations of the 
visitors, although there are no antagonistic ^'Don'ts" 
staring at you from grass - plot and flower - bed. 
Throughout the whole of these gardens I saw no sign 
suggesting restrictions, and since we have to have 
them at home one assumes that the British have an 
instinctive regard for property and a sense of duty 
that is not yet ours. 

My ideas of heaven are rather vague, but it came 
to me that these gardens are as near Elysian Fields 
as one could ask for. Indeed I can well imagine a 
Londoner suddenly translated from this world to 
the heavenly orbit set aside for the ''unco' guid" 
murmuring disdainfully as he screws in his heavenly 
eye-glass, "Not so fine as Kew!" I was alone in the 
gardens, which is supposed to be a melancholy situa- 
tion on a spring day, but I didn't really mind, and as 
a calm, by degrees, possessed me, a calm which I had 

281 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

made no effort to secure, I realized anew that the 
country does us good in spite of ourselves. The sick 
of heart and the unrestful may be bored, but they 
become tranquihzed without the pain of striving for 
peace. There were a number of us women roaming 
through the glades by ourselves, yet not looking ridic- 
ulous, and I suppose real heaven will be a place 
where old maids will fit just as appropriately into the 
lanscape as young lovers. 

However, the gardens were not without lovers. 
''And we shall wander hand in hand" was being 
devoutly followed by admirers of Alfred Noyes (isn't 
it?), who bids us "go down to Kew in lilac-time," 
for the business of wandering hand in hand. The 
most obvious hand-in-handers were a pretty pair 
standing in front of the only lilac-bush I saw in all 
the gardens, both of them hopping up to smell the 
blossoms as their entwined arms were too engaged to 
pull the flowering branches down. I am inclined to 
think now that the poet advised the reader to "go 
down to Kew in lilac-time," not because there were 
any lilacs, but for the reason that the word scans 
easily. No one would take a Tube and line up for a 
bus at Hammersmith ("queue up for Kew") if he had 
been advised to "go down to Kew in rhododendron- 
time." It would be a clmnsy time — or am I thinldng 
of rhinoceroses? 

I sat down on a bench near the lilac-bush, and an- 
other couple came along, also holding hands. As he 
was an officer still in uniform I would have thought 
this remarkable had I not met him before in the Tube. 
On that first encounter he had been standing on the 
platform at Dover Street, indignantly rating a Tube 
employee who represented for the time the System. 



AN AIVIERICAN'S LONDON 

The petty official made no defense of any sort, which 
was unusual in these days, and I started in their 
direction to become one of the group gathering fast 
about them. Yet I went but a few paces nearer, for 
I was arrested by the manner the officer had of not 
looking toward the Tube employee. His head was 
up, his shoulders squared, his voice vibrant. Yet he 
stared straight across the metals at an advertisement 
of no moment. And I realized the boy was blind. 

It was the more of a shock for the sudden apprecia- 
tion that this was the first time I had ever seen an 
angry blind man — a blind man who had dared to be 
angry. The sightless are so utterly at the mercy of 
the people about them that they must remain con- 
trolled, smiling passively in the hope of the good will 
of those with eyes to see. Some day this boy will 
become passive, too, with the patient face of the 
blind, but he is too recently translated from all the 
vigorous privileges of a perfect body to subordinate 
his speech to the exigencies of his cruel estate. The 
same girl was holding his hand who had held it on 
the platform, and she pulled down the lilac blossoms 
for him to smell. He was so gentle, but so helpless 
in his gentleness, that I wondered why he had railed 
in the Tube. I'll never know, for, realizing that he 
would have hated most of all that curious but pitying 
crowd which gathered about him, had he felt their 
presence, I did not become one of it. 

I made an acquaintance in the garden whom I 
again met in the tube. I think it was Samuel Johnson 
who said that anybody could meet anybody at Char- 
ing Cross, but with all the prophetic vision of a great 
mind Johnson could never have defined a tunnel in 
his dictionary as a vaster meeting-place. The lady 

283 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

of my acquaintance had sat opposite me in the bus 
which took me from Hammersmith to the gardens, 
and', after the manner of EngUsh people nowadays, 
had discussed with other passengers what would be 
the best gate for me to enter, that I might fully enjoy 
the beauties of the place. They had decided upon 
the Lion gate for me, and as I sat upon the bench 
by the lilac-bush she approached me to make sure 
that I had missed none of the wonders. 

I told her that the riot of color of azaleas and rhodo- 
dendrons would pale the splendor of California blos- 
somings, and she was so pleased at this — for Americans 
are often too grudging in their praises of products not 
their o^vn — that I found her pattering after me on 
the Piccadilly platform a week or so later, to ask if I 
would not go with her to her own garden in Dedham 
that afternoon. I could have wept from sheer joy 
at her offer, for she didn't know an earthly thing 
about me, and I nodded toward my name on the 
posters, which proved that I had a pressing engage- 
ment with a matinee. I have never seen her since, 
and I will never see her garden, save the glimpse 
she gave me of a lovely one growing in her heart. 

All of this goes to prove what a social center the 
Tube really is, and why it was not very shocking to 
look upon a middle-aged, editorially appearing gentle- 
man whom I met every night as some one I could 
very well have talked to if he had been helplessly 
blind, or a woman fond of flowers, or even a ticket- 
taker. The ticket-takers nodded to me after a while 
along with the '''nk you," or even "'k' you," as they 
received my ticket. I talked with one of them about 
his family, for his wife and baby came down to guide 
him safely through the streets when he crawled out 

284 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

of his warren. Another line of the city was on strike, 
and I asked him if he would be called out. He said 
he 'oped not, that they hadn't a mortal thing to 
strike about, but strikes was like Bank holidays — 
they had to have them every now and then to keep 
the people satisfied. ' He wasn't called out, which I 
add for the satisfaction of such readers as myself 
who always want to know what happens after the 
point is over. 

However, still in the leash of social restraint, I could 
not nod to the editor (I was sure he was an editor);, 
although I was mad to ask him questions. I was mad 
to ask many questions in my travels in the Tube. I 
wanted to ask various partly intoxicated gentlemen 
how they managed it — ask it more in envoy than in 
anger. I remember one young man with the most 
musical voice I have ever heard, to whom I should 
love to have talked, yes, and guided him, although a 
policewoman (looking so capable in her blue unifonn) 
would have warned the young man to have nothing 
to do with me. 

There was a wait in the huge lift for some reason 
or other, after we had all crowded in, and the pas- 
sengers were watching him with quiet amusement, for 
he kept dropping his ticket, which a patient public, 
as fascinated as myself by his pleasant manners, kept 
stooping to pick up for him. He was asking, not if 
he was ''right" for his destination, but where the others 
around him were going; and as no one was inclined 
to tell him, he mused aloud: ''Now you're all glower- 
ing at me," he said, in his gentle, smiling voice, 
"you're all glowering at me, just because I asked you 
where you're going. Strange, we English; every one 
here is going somewhere — a destination in life is the 

2S5 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

only thing we can never avoid. It is nothing to be 
ashamed of. Two people have asked me where I am 
going, yet when I ask them where they are going they 
glower at me. We are a secretive people, and it seems 
that the shame is not in the going, but in the telling. 
We are tight — " and then, after a pause, apologetically, 
''no, I am tight. And you glower at me because you 
are not tight, and therefore will not tell the truth." 

Then we all laughed, but introspectively, because 
we did not know one another. And I wonder, now that 
the United States has ''gone dry," if the naked truth 
will ever be spoken there again. One should read no 
brief for alcohol, but it often seems that, under its 
influence, there comes an absolute elimination of con- 
^'entional utterances that are wrapped around a 
thought, and the idea expressed which appears to 
be the emanation from a fuddled brain is, in reality, 
the gist of the whole matter without the rags of re- 
straining society to masquerade it. 

Another man I should have enjoyed questioning 
was a very well-dressed citizen hanging demurely on 
to a strap— for seats are almost invariably yielded 
to women in the Tubes and buses — who, as an evident 
stranger to him j^assed out, made a kick at him as 
though to relieve his feelings. The stranger achieved 
the platform of his station without consciousness of 
the effort to kick him, and the strap-hanger became 
a controlled man of the world again. Now, what 
rebellion was going on in that passenger's mind that 
made him long to launch out and kick somebody? 
And how many of us who were sitting in the car, or 
standing in it, did not also long occasionally to make 
society our football? I once asked a girl who was 
treating my hair if she ever felt like hitting those 

2S6 



' AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

ladies of fashion whose heads she brushed at so much 
a weary hour, with the implement in liand, and she 
repHed, ''How did you know I was longing to do 
that?" So, as I would have been the hittee in that 
instance, perhaps the iron clamps of conventionaUty 
are not to be despised. 

On the day I went to the Tower by the Tube I 
traveled a portion of the way with the handsomest 
man in the world. Indeed, I descended when he did 
and trailed along respectfully behind him, which was 
quite in order, as it happened, for we were both going 
to the Tower, anyiv'ay. As he was in uniform he was 
probably one of the oflicers of a regiment quartered 
there. I longed to catch up with hmi and say, "You 
are the finest specimen of manhood I have ever seen," 
but I know I should have terrified him. Singular! 
He had had nothing to do with his good looks, and 
my admiration would have been purely an impersonal 
one. I simply like to look at them. I could have ad- 
mired his dog, had one accompanied hmi, or his horse, 
upon which he was not, but might have been, mounted. 
He would not have sent for the police had I expressed 
my appreciation of the good looks of his beasts. 
Yet both of these animals would have reflected his 
good taste, and therefore the compliment would have 
had more to do with him than his splendid bearing 
and noble head. But now he must go through life 
never knowing that a gray-haired woman thinks him 
the superman, all on account of social restrictions. 

I have seen a great many men over here that can 
be classed among the finest types of earth's manhood. 
While I would not exchange the chunkiest of our men 
for the slimmest of these creatures, because they 
are our men, yet the more I see of the British officers 

287 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

the better they stand in my critical eye. Race is 
in their length of limb, their bearing, their sureness, 
and, strangely enough, coupled with that, their mod- 
esty. Some day — a thousand years from now — when 
we in the States have settled down to a type, we may 
have an equal distinction — but not yet. 

Our men over here have an individuality about them 
"which speaks for extreme resourcefulness when a 
personal decision would be necessary, and a depth of 
chest and strength of hmb which give them almost 
unlimited endiu'ance; but they, as compared to the 
British, show an inclination to over-weight and to a 
heaviness of feature. 

Then our uniform is tiying, and our little overseas 
caps absurdly unbecoming. We eschew the ornamen- 
tation of the Sam Browne belt in America as something 
too elaborate for democracy; the pockets must be 
inside, and high collars choke our officers about the 
neck for some Declaration-of-Independence reason or 
other. But I think if our army is to remain a lure as a 
means of living, the sergeants outside the recruiting- 
stations might well wear better-looking and more 
comfortably cut gannents as an added attraction to 
the business of soldiering. 

While the private soldier in England is much shorter 
than his officers, as a rule, the colonials— officers and 
men — are of good height. When I make my way up 
the dim Haymarket at nights it is not difficult to 
pick out the Anzacs coming toward me. I recall one 
of them suddenly looming up on one of the soft spring 
evenings when it would seem that all violence of 
elements and of mankind was forever over. The great 
theater across the way was just emptying its house, 
and men with a w^hite patch that stood for their 

288 



AN AMERICANOS LONDON 

evening clothes, alid women in pale evening frocks, 
were strolling along the sidewalks. Guests were de- 
scending from brilliant motors at the Carlton Hotel, 
other well-dressed Londoners were pressing hopefully 
toward the Trocadero, which is the only great res- 
taurant open for supper. The scene was exactly as it 
used to be before a man whose name every one has 
forgotten threw a bomb at an archduke whose name 
never did matter. Suddenly, this giant Anzac roam- 
ing down the middle of the Haymarket gave a great 
shout, which arrested the attention of all those happy, 
hght-hearted people. He lifted his long arms above 
his head — a commanding figure in the darkness. His 
voice absolutely filled the street : 

"Number One gun ready! Move two degrees to 
the left! Fire!" rang out on the air. 

We were all quiet for the moment, and the Anzac 
went on cascading do^vn the street. ''We'll never get 
away from it — never," I heard a w^oman say as I 
passed her. And, of course, we never v/ill — and 
mustn't. 

The handsome Guardsman got away from me at 
the Tower, for he could pass through with everybody 
saluting him, but poor I must remain behind because 
I had a pocketbook. I must give my pocketbook to 
a man who had a perfect menagerie of them in a 
row of little cages. And when I protested at this, be- 
cause my hanky v/as in my pocketbook, and my 
identity card, to say nothing of my money, I was told 
that it had been made a rule during the war and no 
one had had time to revoke it. For once a lady had 
carried a bomb in her hand-bag, and while she had 
done no damage, she might have; hence this deadly 
hostility against all purses, great and small. 

289 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

"If you will look in my purse you will see I have no 
bomb," I urged. But that wouldn't do. It was the 
rule, and I went into the Tower grounds feehng more 
like a criminal than ever before, and thinking of a 
nmnber of places where I could have secreted splendid 
bombs on my person had I really wanted to blow 
up the Tower. 

I did not want to blow it up, although to my think- 
ing it is just as ugly now as it was when I visited it 
years ago. But it has now taken on an added flavor, 
for within the last four years the Geraian spies were 
there confined and shot on some part of the parade 
ground, a spot not yet historically remote to show to 
the spectator. I asked one of the beef-eaters, all 
dressed up in his red puffed-out Yeoman-of-the- 
Guard uniform, if any of his men fought; and he said 
that he himself had just come back from France. 
Then I walked around him in a circle to get up 
my nerve, for the sixpences which encourage speech 
were back in the little cage, and I returned to 
ask him pleasantly, as one friend to another, if he 
had fought in that fancy dress. But he hadn't — he 
wore khaki. 

You see I am beating about the bush, the bush 
meaning the editor whom I met almost nightly, for 
it is very absurd to be confessing an interest in editors 
• — especially as you know them so well — when one is 
going on fifty, even though the editor is going on 
fiftj^, too. I tried to ease my conscience over my 
interest in this able, portly man, and pretended that 
I was looking out for Beechey, although Beechey and 
the baronet were getting along very well. He had 
spent money on flowers, and when an Englishman 
spends money on a lady he is going some. 

290 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

As I walked home from the Tube station at night I 
found myself taking an added interest in homes, and 
where I would like to live if I had my choice of London 
habitations. And this mental May-moving is as com- 
fortable an indulgence in springtmie activities as one 
could ask for. There was one little street that I 
passed through at midnight which I never saw in the 
daytime, and which I will try hard not to see. It was 
a crooked little road, with domains for every kind of 
household. Some stood back from the roadway, with 
gardens in front; good-sized houses where one could 
entertam largely; and there were other delightful low 
buildmgs, with small doors but a step up from the 
pavement. I frequently took one of these little houses, 
in my imagination, put in a double window, painted 
the door the green of the Prophet, and lived there very 
comfortably on five pounds a week. A fairly spacious 
house had two doors, and in that one I had Mrs. 
Wren (with family) to look after me, the Wrens using 
the smaller door, all being very independent and happy 
— although this house cost me more. 

I think I was generally alone in my house, and if 
I took one of them with a garden and became a hus- 
band and wife, the fancy resolved itself into Beechey's 
house, married to the baronet. Try as I might, I 
could not be a husband and wife, although on very 
springy nights I arranged for the editor to call every 
day, no matter what house I lived in, to talk over his 
work. That is, the editor called until one actual night, 
on the Piccadilly platform, I discovered an acquaint- 
ance of mine talking to the portly, intelligent gentle- 
man, and, spying me, for I was running away rapidly, 
he dragged me over to the man of my dreams and in- 
troduced me. 

291 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

The friend left us as the train drew in and we 
crowded into the car, each seeking a strap, and began 
going through motions with our mouths which would 
suggest conversation. I didn't hear a thing he said, 
and I doubt if he gathered anything from my efforts; 
and it suddenly occurred to me that this was the first 
time I had been obliged to make conversation above 
the roaring wheels. I began to wish heartily I had 
never met this gentleman, but had gone on with our 
mental conversations in which I always appeared to 
such advantage. In my embarrassment I did not 
grasp a strap, but found myself holding on to an 
electric-light bulb, exhilarated, but perplexed by the 
sudden warmth of my nervous hand. 

I did not long hold on to the bulb, however, as a 
terrible young woman — terrible in her youth — who was 
seated directly beneath me, looked up as I laughed 
shrilly over my mistake, and mimediately rose to give 
me her seat. She was not very young , either, but she 
was younger than I, and by the time I had concealed 
my rage and sunk into her place I was a decrepit 
old woman nodding in the chimney-corner. 

I grew a little older to my new friend, too. He 
tried to hide it, but as he bent above my aged frame 
there was a sort of trimnph in his face, a masculine 
triumph. I could imagine just what was going through 
his mind. He, a man, would never be old or ridiculous ; 
he could do anything he wanted to, and no one would 
call him silly. He could walk right out with the 
chit who had given me her seat, if he had known her, 
and no one would have thought them an ill-matched 
couple. But let me walk out with a young man the 
age of that young woman and I would be a joke — 
just a joke. 

292 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

I assume that was going through his mind, but not 
after we reached Brompton Road station. There an 
awful judgment was pronounced upon him. There 
was another girl in the train, sitting by my side, 
utterly absorbed in a book, so much so that she had 
not observed my relegation to the ingle-nook in life, 
nor the arrogance of my male companion, who was 
from then on a lusty fellow in his own eyes, much too 
yomig for me. But a lurch of the train and the con- 
sequent reeling about of those standing caused her 
to look up, and with a cry of dismay she leaped to 
her feet and, profusely apologizing, offered — offered 
my triumphant male her seat! He refused it with 
imploring eyes, refused it indignantly, piteously; but 
she was adamant. She no doubt had a father herself, 
or a grandfather. And at last, with a groan of desper- 
ation, hoping to attract no more attention from the 
amused crowd, he crouched down beside me — an old, 
old man, ready for the chimney-corner, too. 

I walked through my little street very happily 
that night, for the point is that the denouement was 
a great relief to me, and, while nobody mil believe it, 
I was glad that the verdict of youth had so saucily 
put us in our proper niches. One might think that 
this was choosing the dream to the business, and that 
the friend I loved back in America who scolded me in 
the first chapters for wanting to dream would have 
disapproved, had I not found a letter on my return 
home from the boy who on Good Friday was prepar- 
ing for death. For this letter proved the Importance 
of Getting Old with all its ensuing relegation of actu- 
aUties to the material young. The boy wrote that he 
had a complete new set of doctors, and therefore, I 
should judge, a completely different body. He was 

293 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

now going to get well and marry his young lady who 
had flown to him from Egypt. 

He seemed to think it was all my arranging. He 
understood now the wisdom of suffering, he glibly 
wrote. For it would seem that the grief of one can 
always be resolved into joy for another, and as he 
was undoubtedly the ''another" and I the ''one," he 
didn't in the least regret my experience. Nor did I. 
Particularly as that early happening prepared me 
absolutely to prefer my small mental house in my 
dim little street. I shall not suffer in my house of 
dreams. 

But it is not always so — had not always been so 
with me, perhaps. Love is a greedy animal, and the 
exercising of it develops a greater and a greater ap- 
petite. Tranquil as the homes looked in my Uttle 
street at midnight, a harassment of the spirit was 
not unknown behind the correct stucco fronts. 

Always, always it intrigues me, as I walk through 
a city, to know what is going on behmd the unblink- 
ing house-fronts. And before the year was out I met 
a woman who lived in one of these houses. I will not 
give you her nationality, and that she talked to me 
so freely may have been from the unflattering fashion 
women have of confiding to their sisters who are not 
dangerous. But I no longer mind that. I can always 
avenge myself by stealing the plot and making money 
out of them! 

She had been loved — oh, yes! — more than once. 
She made little calculations on her fingers which ended 
in a shrug of amusement, as though there w^ere not 
digits enough on her pretty hands to tell them all 
off. And she had been hurt just about as many 
times. Not long ago (while I was walking past her 

294 



AN AISIERICAN'S LONDON 

house perhaps) another one had come along — very 
agreeable, quite in earnest, serious enough for flowers. 

''He had sent them by messenger, and came on 
later," the woman recounted (she liked the recount- 
ing; I could see that; it is one of the compensations 
of an experience no matter how it turns out). ''They 
lay on my little satinwood table, and I stood by the 
table, touching them with my finger-tips as he came 
into the room. He crossed directly to me — strode 
across, and then stood towering above — oh, a big 
man. Now I knew perfectly well if I did not move 
back a pace and if I lifted my face to his, he would 
kiss me, and after he'd kissed me he would soon mean 
a great deal to me. 

"And I knew, too, because I am worldly-wise, my 
dear, that it wouldn't be so very different, no matter 
who he was. And, will you believe it? The whole 
panorama of those early experiences passed in front 
of me as I stood fussing with those poor flowers. Not 
only my life, but millions of lives just the same — 
women's lives. Those first wonderful days — the dis- 
covery of tremendous mutual interests : skies, chimney- 
pots, music, the vista of streets, our friends, our desire 
to help them, our desire to help every one — we were 
out for molding lives. And then those breathless 
silences — of love. We would be going through all 
those phases when his first note would come, break- 
ing an appointment; and after that we would quarrel 
a Uttle — (but oh, the reconciliation!) — then in a little 
while would come what I call the telephonic period. 
You know — waiting for the bell, or hearing your heart 
beat as you decide to crush your pride and call him 
up. By that time you are beaten; you might as well 
accept it. And then scenes, and tears in the night; 

20 295. 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

and oh, most shameful of all! walking hurriedly past 
his door. So it wears on and out, until that day comes 
when you swing out of bed in the morning, thinking 
first 'tea' and not his name." 

She paused. 

''Did you review all that as the young man stood 
waiting to see if you would raise your head? " I asked 
it softly, fearing to break her confessional mood. 

"Every bit of it. I knew he would be like the others 
■ — if I lifted my head." 

"Well? What did you do?" 

And then that close-mouthed, exasperating woman 
laughed and said, "That's telling!" 

But I know what she did. Do you? 



Chapter XVIII " 

IT was on a glad May morning that I parted with 
Mrs. Hackett and my maisonnette and went down 
to May fair, to Hve at a Woman's Club. The 
plane-trees came out at last to wish me farewell, and 
the garden was at its best, especially as Mrs. Hacking 
had now taken from the line all those coarse garments 
of repentance which my landlady had been so troubled 
over her insistently hanging out, 

Mrs. Hacking took leave of me shortly before 
Beechey and I took temporary leave of each other. 
My working housekeeper had almost worked out the 
four pounds she owed me, and I really couldn't afford 
to keep her on any longer, as the cost of having her 
remain with me while she paid me back was becoming 
too great. She went away at noon, dressed in fresh 
crape, to take up her new position as barmaid. She 
said her ''dad" advised her to go into the bar, so that 
she might enjoy more cheerful surroundings. She 
left a roll of receipted bills, and that I found later they 
were earlier bills, and that the last week's ones had 
not been paid at ail, is of no great moment; it was 
my own fault and my last tribute to spring madness. 

For I had no sooner settled at the club than the 
business American in me began to assert itself. To 
the amazement of my English friends, who in the first 
place would not have been bilked by Mrs. Hacking, 
but, granting that they could have been, would have 

297 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

called it '' tiresome" and dropped the matter, I sought 
out a solicitor, and he went after Mrs. Hacking. And, 
mark you, what I had failed to do by generosity and 
the exercise of the consideration I feel is due to those 
we employ this man effected immediately by the di-aft- 
ing of a letter. 

The British lower classes fear the law, not only 
because it is the law, with its heavy penalties, but for 
the reason that it stands for control, and ordered sway, 
and set regulations which keep them happily — or un- 
happily — disciplined. I have never seen her since, 
but she has paid into the attorney's office such sums 
as we could prove that she had taken. It was a pitiful 
ending of an effort to introduce comfortable innova- 
tions into a circumscribed life. It was more pitiful 
for Mrs. Hacking than for me. I knew myself all 
along — and I knew Mrs. Hacking. But I can imagine 
the confusion that is going on in her mind, as she 
draws beer at the taps, and sends a weeklj^ postal 
order to my firmly importuning (well-named) ''solici- 
tor." She met an employer who was at once amiable 
and terrible; one with loose, lavish inclinations, who 
suddenly showed the cloven hoof of commercialism. 
In short, an American. 

When the door closed on our handmaiden (hand- 
me-out maiden, we had grown to call her), Beechey and 
I faced each other. We both had our traveling-cases 
in hand, as she was going into the country for some 
time. She was going away, and I knew it, to escape 
from the baronet; to escape a title and a shelter with- 
out the fear of Quarter Day hanging over her, warm 
clothes, and plenty of food for the rest of her life. 

"Why?" I asked her in the silence that followed the 
banging of the door. 

298 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

"He hasn't asked mo yet, but he may, and so I 
must get away before he does." That was Uke 
Beechey. She cared nothing at all about scalps — 
they were not paintable. 

''Why?" Feeling no necessity for a further choice 
of words. 

"Because it would be impossible." 

"Why?" 

"Oh, my goodness, don't go on saying that! I'm 
not his kind, that's all." 

"He'll never want you to be. That's just the point." 

"Well, he's not my kind." 

"He's a gentleman, and you're a gentlewoman. 
He likes beautiful things, and so do you — " 

"He doesn't like beautiful things." 

"Not open country, and trees, and flowers?" 

"Oh, he likes them all right, when they're real, but 
not when they're painted." 

"I thought he bought pictures?" 

She gave a little shriek. "He does! He does! 
But oh, such pictures! Cats lapping milk out of 
saucers. Old folks asleep, and small boys tickling 
them. I saw them last week. I didn't want to speak 
to you of them. I thought at first I could live them 
down. I couldn't — ever." 

"I've no patience with you, judging a good man 
by painted cats lapping milk ! " 

"You have patience. You understand perfectly. 
You hate bad acting, and you hate bad actors. It 
isn't their fault they're bad, but you hate them just 
the same." 

"The baronet isn't a painter. And what if he was, 
and a bad one? You're not. It wouldn't change your 
ideals." 

299 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

"Yes, it would. It would change me. You said 
yourself, once, that when fine actors played for a long 
time in remote stock companies they began to grow 
careless, and after a while they didn't know a good 
performance from a bad one. It came from associa- 
tion. I tell you, when you get into an old family 
like that, in order to get along with them you must 
try to feel like them. It wouldn't be fair not to. 
And I'm never going to feel that cats lapping milk 
make a good picture — no, not if I don't have enough 
to eat!" 

"You're not young, Beechey — not awfully young. 
You're twenty-eight now, and while you may not 
absolutely starve, you won't have enough — " 

"I'll never starve. I'll eat my crusts of bread and 
I'll see great pictures. I'll go to the Imperial War 
Museum and see Sargent's Xiassed' when it's hung 
there, and I'll come away satisfied." 

I was silent. Beechey and I had been to the 
Academy, and we had seen together Sargent's 
"Gassed," which had been painted for the Imperial 
Museum. We looked at it for a long while, and 
didn't say anything, then we walked around a little, 
and went back to see it again; and when we went 
home both of us cried in the bus. 

"After I had seen the pictures in his house,'^ my 
friend continued, "I asked him to go with me to the 
Academy. It was the acid test. He loitered through 
the rooms, picking out all the slick pictures with 
stories to them, and stopping to admire. By the time 
he came to 'Gassed' my heart was beating so loud 
he could have heard it. He did hear it, I guess, for 
he looked once — once at ' Gassed ' — and then he turned 
to that awful thing on the opposite wall, full of 

300 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

machinery making shells, and he said, 'You can almost 
hear the roar, can't you?' 

*'It was my heart roaring — my machinery inside of 
me. And it came to me right there that, of all the 
machinery inside of me, the part which gets the least 
consideration in the struggle to keep ourselves stoked 
and going is the heart — the spirit, I mean. And yet it 
doesn't cost one cent to feed it — it just asks for space 
to breathe in and not be crowded 'way over on the 
left side to make room for French oysters and pheas- 
ants' breasts and Peche Melba. Oh, I'm sajdng it 
all crazily, but you must know what I mean — you 
couldn't act if you didn't. If I married that nice 
man — if he asked me to, and he hasn't — I'd just be 
putting my spirit in one of those little wicker cages 
cruel people keep their birds in." 

That's that, as they say over here. And being as 
old as the world, and thinking I'm as wise, I could 
very well have said to Beechey: ''All right — you're 
right. Give up the baronet. But who is the man?" 
Only I didn't. I kissed her, and she went down to 
live in a lovely old manor-house, with the kindest 
of English friends, while I went on to my club with the 
comfortable feeling that so long as those friends of 
hers are alive all her machinery will be fairly well 
nourished. But I decided that there ought to be, 
among our many relief societies, one established for 
the cultivation and support of just such rare, crazy 
spirits as Beechey's. 

Yet I like efficiency, and I like best to find all the 

machinery working together — brains, heart, and the 

hair-spring nerves. And I was as happy as possible 

the minute the club door was opened to me to witness 

among the women gathered there all these little 

301 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

innards co-operating. This club is composed of 
American women — they may have married English- 
men, but they must be American-born — and during 
the war it became the center for American activities 
having to do with relief work. The president of the 
club is the head of the Women's Division of the 
American Red Cross in London. She still sits sur- 
rounded by clicking typewriters, while in the drawing- 
rooms above days are still set apart for the making 
of hospital garments; for the war rolled slowly into 
a whirling ball of furious energy, and just as slowly 
will it wear do\vn into the fiat stretches of civilian life. 

Out of its uglinesses have sprung some goodnesses 
that have come to stay. There is a special committee 
for civilian relief in this club that takes over the cases 
our consul sends to them, for they must be Americans 
in distress. It is a shameful thing that, unlike any 
other country of position, our consulates are the only 
official residences in strange countries that have not 
a government sum at their convenience to cover such 
cases. The funds applied to these men and women 
in need are collected through the generosity of the 
American visitors and from those expatriates who 
know better this side of the world. 

The ground-floor front is used by the American 
Red Cross and this committee for civilian relief, and 
the hall of the club is never empty of some of our 
country-people in distress, whispering their story 
into the ears of the clear-visioned girls in Red Cross 
uniform or the charming, well-dressed woman who 
cares for our civilians. I wish for the sake of the 
unfortunates who come for help that they had a 
greater privacy for their griefs, but I never pass 
through the hall, and I am sure others are like me, 

302 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

without feeling that, by my very proximity to their 
distresses, these griefs are common, and that I, too, 
without the insignia of officialdom, must put a shoulder 
to the wheel as part of each day's curriculum. 

It was everybody's shoulder to the wheel on the 
Sunday I came in with my suitcase. "Have you any 
money?" I was greeted with. And as I counted out 
my salary and placed it confidently into the hands of 
the Red Cross official, the housekeeper came rushing 
in with another roll borrowed from a son-in-law, her 
arrival coincident with a second Red Cross girl who 
was already hatted and coated for a hurried trip to 
Liverpool. A telegram had come from a company of 
soldiers' wives who were being sent back to our coun- 
try that the American Red Cross check for their 
passage was refused in that distrustful city of Liver- 
pool, and the boat would sail that night wdthout them. 
The Red Cross girls had gone down into the country 
for a breath of fresh air, but they had come up again, 
and, as no large sum of money was in the office, the 
hat was sternly passed ai*ound and the Sunday outing 
was transferred into a long train-journey for one of 
the Uttle Americanos. But the soldiers' wives sailed 
that night. 

While I had emptied my safety-pocket, I had a few 
shilHngs left to take me out to Pinner-on-the-Pin that 
afternoon, provided that I would go third-class and 
not buy any chocolates, which are four shillings a 
pound, and awful. This was to be my first Sunday 
in the country, not counting a muscular engagement 
to and from Hampton Court and Richmond. We 
had friends to visit in both those delightful places, 
friends whom we held in fond esteem as we started 
toward a bus station, but who became disagreeable 

303 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

and ill-favored in appearance as we waited and 
crowded and fought for a chance to see them. Upon 
arriving at Hampton Court and Richmond, they took 
on more attractive qualities. We agreed that it 
was '4ovely when you got there," and were ready to 
listen to the ease with which we could travel back and 
forth on week-days. Yet, ere we had reached Lon- 
don, upon our return trip home " (buses abandoned, 
taxis sought for, Tubes and trains resorted to), our 
suburban hosts again became abominable in our eyes, 
and, like the rest of London, we chimed, ''Never 
agyne!" 

Unlike the rest of London, I had clung to this, but 
the city people, after four years of misery, cannot let 
a Sunday pass without one more try for these choice 
spots which were once gained without effort. They 
are thirsty for the sun and sky, and for clear nights 
that are not fraught with fear. But I clung to city 
gardens for Sunday tea during the early spring, or 
went to an old house in the Grove at Highgate, which, 
as I pleasantly ruminate upon pleasant homes, re- 
mains most affectionately in my memory. 

It is the most extraordinary feature of London 
life : this taking a Tube, traveling for twelve minutes, 
emptying yourself out from the Tube lift into a mean, 
overcrowded slum, and, by making one turn, walk 
under the limes of a country village to the Georgian 
doorstep of your country house. My friends do not 
stop at the Georgian period. The warm brick wall 
and bastion which separates their garden from Hamp- 
stead Heath is of the time of Edward III. He built 
it for utilitarian purposes, and it has become a lovely 
thing of color for the eyes of the literati to feed upon. 
I, for one, have always found less beauty in an ancient 

304 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

bit of building originally erected for the mere purpose 
of being beautiful than in such garden-walls which 
once served a serious purpose. And I think faces are 
that way, and that they do not take on any great 
loveliness unless there has been a nobility of effort 
behind the outward beauty of feature, time thus 
cunningly revealing the inner spirit to the outer world. 
Men of letters for generations recognized Highgate 
Hill as a dear spot for the purpose of writing, with 
none too long a journey down to Fleet Street, equally 
dear for the purpose of selling. Lord Bacon died here 
as the result of inhospitably damp sheets. Coleridge, 
who lived in my grove (for any place I love becomes 
mine without costing me a cent), also looked last upon 
the Heath from a Grove window before he turned his 
face to the wall. Indeed, a great deal of dying has 
gone on in Highgate, and the visitor is obliged to 
repel a strong inclination of Grove hosts to rush you 
to the burial-ground, something as we once drove 
strangers about the cemetery in my Western city. 
Only we had another reason than graves — they were 
the only grounds whose roads were good. 

A sort of despair sweeps over me as I record from 
time to time in this book encounters with present-day 
writers, and yet say so little of those men and women 
who have formed our tastes and founded what style 
we may possess. But reading blue tablets set in city 
houses is not the pursuit of a real householder, and 
this is a mean chronicle of the moment. Across the 
street from my club is one of these tablets and I 
have never read whom it holds in honorable recogni- 
tion. It might be Sheridan or Shelley, Sydney Smith 
or Lord Lytton, all of whom lived in my street, 
which goes to prove that I am more fashionably 

305 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

located than if I were in Plighgate, where Lord 
Bacon strayed purely by accident, while experiment- 
ing on a hen. 

Now, a fashionable neighborhood has a drawback 
which I never appreciated in reading avidly of the 
routs and balls, soirees and masques in the novels of 
the English from Richardson to the interpreters of 
to-day's smart society. Comment on this is stepping 
aside from Pinner, but I shall return to the little vil- 
lage gladly — all in good time — for my visits to Pinner 
relieved my tired brain from the insistent beat of 
syncopated time which pounded in my head tln'ough- 
out the week, as the result of nightly jazzes in my 
street of fashion. In all my reading of those London 
parties, in my enjoyment of crushes on the sidewalk, 
of hostesses on the staircase, of ''Let me get you an 
ice, dearest," of chaperons against the wall, of ''The 
royalties are coming," of the last dance in the pale 
dawn — she as white as the dawn in his arms — I 
never once thought of the neighbors who were not 
invited and wanted to go to sleep ! 

Yet one need not be sorry for the neighbors, now 
that we have entered upon the whirlwind fashions 
of the tune, provided that they dance also. In the 
present day, if the business of drum-beating, howl- 
ing aloud, blowing a siren, and breaking glass bot- 
tles becomes insistent, the neighbor can get up and 
go to the party, whether invited or not. It would not 
be very shocking to the hostess of to-day if you came 
over to her house, yes, and brought a partner with you. 
Even in verj^ fashionable houses hostesses know onl}'- 
half of their guests at these balls for young people. 
They invite some girls and some boys, and these 
acquaintances bring their o^vn partners with whom 

306 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

they are accustomed to dance. They do not even 
bother with the securing of a card. ''Oh, dear!" a 
London hostess is said to have exclaimed, ''I feel so 
lonesome at my own dances." 

And since the war many of the buds refuse to be 
chaperoned. ''Besides, I'd never be able to find one," 
a girl told me. ''She'd be dancing, too." It's a prob- 
lem — another one— and I don't in the least care how 
it's going to end, so long as I can get back, before 
another London season, to my New York apartment 
amid riotous studios, whose Bohemian occupants 
go to bed at ten that they may have the early morning 
light for work. 

But on Sundays there has been Pinner, commencing 
when the days grew absolutely warm. Beechey dared 
country houses before I ventured, and would creep 
back to my fireside to thaw out. The English have 
a week for spring house-cleaning. It comes along in 
April some time, when the fires are allowed to go out, 
and are not started again. It is spring because the 
house is clean, and if it is spring it is too warm for 
fires. So tra-la-la, put on another sweater. 

I changed from the Piccadilly Tube to the Bakerloo 
en route to that place where you buy your tickets for 
Pinner. It is presumably a station that has doors and 
windows above-ground, but of this I know nothing, 
as my operations have been carried on sub terra. 
I met, while going through the galleries at the changing- 
point, a large part of the Japanese army, who couldn't 
read signs and with Eastern stoicism were trying to 
accommodate themselves to a lifetime in the under- 
world — a world which, I hear, is not without its at- 
tractions. It must have been the enthusiasm in my 

face which caused them to attach themselves to me 

307 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

when they heard me inquiring my own way Pinner- 
ward, as from that time on I headed the army. 
Even at the ticket-office they also bought tickets for 
Pinner, not that they knew any one there, but prob- 
ably for the reason that Pinner is easy to pronounce. 
I do not wish to boast, but I feel that I created a 
demand for tickets for Pinner, every one was booking 
for there, and officials were ciying, ^^Not the Pinner 
train," to lax individuals with an inclination to go 
wrong if possible. 

When the train pulled in — it was made up at Baker 
Street — I immediately secured a good seat by the 
door, and began telling lateish passengers, "Yes, this 
is the Pinner train," until I had my compartment 
full in no time. They were standing up, even, block- 
ing the view from the windows. Then a silence fell, 
the way it does on railway trains, after the doors are 
banged and before we start; and upon looking at my 
watch I found that, according to its proud, pre-war 
platinum face, it was past the hour for the departure. 
And I then said in a veiy timid voice to all of those 
glum silent ones, "Is this the Pinner train?" 

No one answered me, they were so astounded. I 
had been collecting visitors fond of Pinner for fifteen 
minutes. I had created a flair for Pinner. People 
who had hitherto been satisfied with Harrow had 
changed their tickets at the cost of threepence extra, 
all on account of that secure sensation which goes 
with a party when being personally conducted. And 
now I asked if this was the Pinner train! 

At that precise moment we started toward some 
destination — no one knew what — and, frantic with 
anxiety, heads were stuck out of our compartment 
windows, two full heads and one extra pair of eyes at 

308 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

each window, while hoots filled the air to attract the 
attention of the guard and ask if we were ''right" for 
Pinner. We were — I knew it all along — yet the com- 
partment was hostile toward me, and I rode all the 
way down behind a large, engulfing newspaper, 
wrongly called the Observer. Or, perhaps, I should 
say ''rightly/' as it had every opportunity for ob- 
serving while I dared not peep out once at the sweet 
green fields for fear of accusing eyes directed toward 
me. For that reason I did not know that the carriage 
had emptied itself at one stopping-place until I heard 
a chattering of strange tongues on the platform, and 
found that the Japanese army, along with everybody 
else, had reached Pinner. 

But my troubles were not over. While I had the 
name of the cottage, and the name of the lane where 
the cottage lived, I could not find the cottage. I do 
not like houses to have numbers when they live in 
lanes, but after going up and down the pretty way a 
number of times, calling on all sorts of respectable 
people, who were creaking with Sunday joints, I 
could well understand why a postman should prefer 
numbers. I wonder that they do not strike for num- 
bers, and refuse to have a Harbor View, or a Milldew, 
or whatever it may be, on their visiting-list. 

I then withdrew to the top of the lane, where I 
could see a caravan over in a field, and I wished my 
friends lived in something as definite as a gay red 
wagon. I reflected upon my friends. Now, they were 
Irish, and if they were Irish, would they not do as the 
Irish do? Yes, they would. And what would the 
Irish do? They would let vines grow untidily over 
the name if it was on the house, and if on the gate I 
would not see it, as, of course, the gate would not be 

309 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

closed. I tried first looking for open gates sagging 
from the liinges, for I did not wish to be discovered 
tearing crimson ramblers from pleasant homes, as 
ruthless as a house-painter, except as a last resort. 
It ivas on the gate — the only open gate— and as the 
door-bell was out of order, or at least no one answered 
it, I walked through the house, and discovered my 
friends in the garden which gave directly upon the 
meadow where lay the caravan, the Pin, a small 
stream, rolling between. 

My hostess had called upon the caravan people 
while strolling in the meadow on the pretense of look- 
ing for tennis-balls. She had no tennis-court, but 
an inventive mind, and she had found the tenants 
of the gay vehicle veiy ungipsy-like, the lady being 
most apologetic because she had no maid. How she 
ever could have secured a servant, sodden with feudal- 
ism, to work for anybody who lived in a wagon I don't 
know, but I suppose she would have shown her a 
servant's bedroom under the wagon, and that con- 
formity to custom would have overcome any other 
unusualness in correct living. 

Nothing was usual about my friend's house. She 
said she had no housekeeping cares, as she didn't 
care, and I wondered why I hadn't thought of that 
in Chelsea, since I really didn't care either; but my 
Dutch and English ancestry get in the way of a com- 
plete shrugging off of responsibility. I have a guilty 
feeling that I ought to care, which nullifies actual 
abandonment to form. 

They cared about a great many other things — ■ 

those people. They cared not only for Ireland, but 

for the world and its future happiness. They seemed 

to feel that the great white hope was the United 

310 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

States, and they assured me that many other people in 
England felt that way, too, but wouldn't say so. 
With one exception, this has been the only household 
I have visited during my entire stay over here where 
my country has been upheld, and I never left them 
without a strong desire to stop at the cable office and 
send a message to somebody — anybody in Washington 
— which would run something like: ''Just returned 
from Pinner. It is decided there League of Nations 
imperative. Please accept." 

I say British households, for the American in busi- 
ness here is stanch to his birthplace, although I 
have found that the men of arts and letters are less 
loyal, and I think it is not for the reason that the 
latter class have more cultivated minds, but that they 
are not so generally well informed. We are all suffer- 
ing from a surface knowledge of world conditions, and 
we have caught a few phrases which we chatter out 
at luncheon-tables and think we're clever. Especially 
is it so among women who sat next to somebody im- 
portant the night before, and can tell you all of 
Downing Street's inner processes of thought. 

But, as I have said earlier, I don't blame an Eng- 
lishwoman for attacking us if she wants to and dis- 
playing at the same time an enormous lack of real 
statistics. It is the American expatriate, sneering 
out of one corner of her mouth at the commercialism 
of her country and out of the other corner inquiring 
how she may avoid the British income tax, who is 
about as mean a type as our nation has yet produced. 

If the few Americans who are not entirely loyal 
think they are making a success with the English by 
deprecating the ways of their own countiy they are 
pitifully mistaken. As highly nationaUzed a people 

21 311 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

as the English look with indifferent contempt upon 
such boot-licking. ''Surely a man without a country," 
one of them said to me, after Ustening to an arraign- 
ment of the greed of the United States by a one-time 
citizen, who asked, in the next sentence, what was the 
highest price I thought he could get out of these 
States if he went on a ''propaganda" lecture-tour. 

I met at a restaurant dinner, several weeks ago, an 
American who, having been in this country for a few 
weeks, couldn't go to sleep without a monocle in his 
eye. His particular theme was the ineptness of our 
fighting forces, and he created by this assertion such 
fiercely fighting forces at the hotel table that he with- 
drew and went to his rooms. An hour afterward we 
called up this man on the telephone, with Beechey 
at the mouthpiece and the rest of us hovering near. 
Beechey became a lady of title, with a super-English 
accent, who had dined, so she said, at the next table, 
and had made so bold as to call up the gentleman — 
all London knowing him, of course — and applaud 
him for his breadth of mind. 

What we could gather from the vibrations that 
came to us was a most ecstatic expatriate assuring 
her ladyship that he was not at all in sympathy with 
the narrow views of his countrymen, and, indeed, often 
felt like apologizing for them. By clutching each 
other's hands we forbore to tear the telephone from 
the wall and hurl it in the direction of his rooms, and 
after Beechey had made an appointment to lunch with 
him the next day, we left him to the punishment which 
lay ahead, of walking around the hotel lobby during 
the following noon hour, waiting to be claimed by a 
real lady. We never knew the end, but, at least, it was 
something to have met with the complete renegade. 

312 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

The other British household not only upheld my 
country, but rebuked me for not fighting for it more 
vigorously. They little knew that I could have put 
my head down on the shoulder of this household and 
cried tears of appreciation. It was a comfortable 
place to cry in, which means also to be glad in: the 
top floor of an office-building, wide and low-ceilinged, 
hke a country house, with the windows on one side 
giving upon a green graveyard, gay with sporting 
children, and on the other upon a dusky city street 
where we could faintly espy hopeful night-walkers 
mincing down on high heels to the Strand. 

The night before I dined in this house, an elderly 
woman — one abandoned to being elderly — had asked, 
as we left the Tube lift, if she could walk along with 
me, for she was afraid of the dark. It ended in my 
taking her all the way home to a nice little house 
opposite the palace of a duke, while she told me of 
the fear of the black outdoors that had always pos- 
sessed her. We spoke of these things as we looked 
down upon the dusky street from this high, safe home, 
and my hostess said she had often thought how 
dreadful it must be for a girl who was really afraid 
of the streets after dark to have to walk them for her 
living. For timidity of the night is just as much a 
part of the lives of the unconformed as of those of 
elderly ladies living in the shadow of ducal houses. 

From that topic all of us — those back in the room, 
sitting on chintz-covered chairs — ^went on to speak 
of the wickedness of the dark room as a punishment 
for criminals, now that fear of thick darkness, claus- 
trophobia it is called, is a defined nervous disease. 
That subject led on to various injustices of imprison- 
ment, and from that to German prisoners in England. 

313 



AN AMERICAN'S "LONDON 

I had a sick heart beating against my breast, for I 
wanted to speak of a judgment rendered in an Eng- 
lish court a day or two before. A British farmer was 
fined ten pounds for giving a German prisoner a piece 
of bread that he might supplement the scanty fare 
allowed him in the prison camp, and by increasing 
his fare increase his working output on the farmer's 
land, for the prisoner was weak. 

I hesitated, fearing to give offense, yet the English 
party themselves brought it up, not discussing it 
loudly, but in low tones of distress. And it was all 
kinds of English people who were concerned over this 
judgment; one was a woman whose husband had been 
killed at the front; another an officer in a Highland 
regiment, scarred for life by the bullets of the enemy; 
my own hostess was bearing a title as a reward for 
her magnificent work throughout the war. And it 
was an English gentleman of the old school who gave 
the summary: ''The little farmer — did you read his 
plea for clemency? He begged the court to bear in 
mind that he was not sorry for the German — he gave 
him bread that he might work him harder. I'd*rather 
be Judas than that judge. Judas betrayed only one 
man — this fellow has betrayed his country." 

In spite of the verdict of the judge, I walked home 

through the streets that night with ever so warm a 

feeling in my heart for all the world, for tolerance 

had been the keynote of the evening, and it had come 

from Whig and Tory alike, from civilian and from 

fighting-man, from artist and expert on lost motions. 

The world is made up of these people, and the world is 

made up of circles. And if this little circle on the top 

floor of that office-building could weave so beautiful 

a chaplet of generous thoughts, could not all circles 

314 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

become as understandingly engaged and merge into 
one large round community of harmonious belief? 

''If so," I communed with mj^self, as I walked 
along, "if so I might as well remain in England as — " 
Then I pulled myself up shortly, and I said aloud, 
while standing on the curbstone preparing to cross 
Piccadilly, ''Louise Closser Hale, you're an American, 
and don't you forget it!" 

But when I had crossed the street I was even more 
unstable about myself, for I had looked first to the 
right and then to the left, instinctively, whereas in 
America we must look first to the left and then to 
'the right to avoid the traffic. It was no longer difficult 
to reverse the order as when one first comes over. 
It was no longer like trying to rub your head and 
pat your stomach at the same time. The trouble 
would be to look to the left and then to the right when 
I crossed the street at home. 

It became ''curiou.ser and curiouser" as I began to 
watch myself. I decided a dress in a window was 
dear, although I had not put the pounds into dollars. 
I was thinking in English money. Moreover, I had 
called it a "frock" in my mind and not a dress. 
And — oh, more of the moreovers! — I thought it was 
very smart when it probably wasn't at all. I began 
making fierce speeches to myself, for this habit of 
absorption was creeping over me: "You'd better 
be going home — sponge!" or, sarcastically, "I sup- 
pose you'll have an English accent next." Immediately 
after that last snort at myself I remember calling to 
a maid who tapped at my door, "I'll be out ^directly,' " 
then terrified her by yelling upon this English sHp, 
" 'Right away,*" I said, " 'right away.'" 

When summer came on I visited friends farther 

315 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

afield, going down on Sunday-morning trains and 
coming back late Monday afternoon. Something 
warned me that I must begin to wean myself away 
from London. I was sure of it after the day I spent 
at the Temple. I think the first visit of an American 
to the Temple is rather dreary. There doesn't seem 
to be enough air, and you are nervous about the 
sewerage. Besides, you have your guide-book, which 
is a nuisance. If you keep on revisiting this locality 
and still dislike it, you had better go home, anj^way — 
a Broadway cafe is the only place for you. But on 
the day you are too fascinated to leave it, even to 
take tea with a beautiful British officer, on the day 
you loiter in Fountain Court, pick out your rooms in 
Brick Court, chat with the wig-maker in Pump Court, 
you had also best arrange for your transportation, for 
London is insidiously enfolding you in its arms. 

The wig-maker was working on the white horse- 
hair adornment of a K. C. He asked me if I knew 
what a K. C. meant, and I replied that I did — that it 
meant Knights of Columbus. But he was very stern 
with me. He sa'd the war got into everything, and 
K. C. — the original K. C. — was King's Counsel. The 
wig he was making showed no great novelty of form, 
and I asked him if he couldn't have the hair bobbed; 
at that he was intensely annoyed, and said they must 
all be alike until they became judges, when they have 
completely new wigs. I then wanted to know if he 
could not add more horsehair to the barrister's wig, 
and thus save the judge six guineas. But he said it 
would be impossible, anyway: when one becomxe a 
judge the head-size immediately increased. He wanted 
to sell me a book on the Temple, and I told him if I 
learned any more about it I should never go back to 

316 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

America at all; and he asked me if it was necessary 
to return. I replied spontaneously, thank the Lord! 
that it was necessary because I was an American. 
But as I walked up Cockspur Street, past the ticket- 
offices, I did not find little tendrils of longing stretch- 
ing out from my heart, as I had sometimes felt them 
before, and I was almightily worried. 

Going down into the country didn't help things 
any. Apart from the difficulty of getting to and fro, 
which can be obviated by traveling first-class, I ap- 
proved of all my country houses, and wished to smug- 
gle them into America. I would also like to take the 
Sunday eleven-o'clock going down to Brighton, little 
engine and all, for the train is called ''the Pullman," 
and we could have a great deal of fun with these cars, 
introducing their slim, delicate selves to our original 
burly Pullmans, which have felt no refining influences 
of an old civilization. But they are a pearl of great 
price, for it costs three dollars and fifty cents to ride 
one hour on them. 

Sometimes I tried to discourage myself from this 
hold London was getting on me by recalling the coffee 
we make, but the friend I visit near Brighton prepares 
the finest coffee I have ever tasted, and it is ''British- 
made." The pulverized bean is put in an earthenware 
jug and boiling water is poured slowly on to it. Then 
for about fifteen minutes it rests in a pan of water 
boihng fiercely on the stove, stirred once or twice, and 
served from the jug at the table. I am told this is 
old Cornwall fashion, although probably invented by 
the Cornish householder Arnold Bennett. 

My friend has merits besides coffee. She has a view 
of the harbor, where the great cement pyramids of 
mystery are being made. (Fancy an Admiralty secret 

317 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

remaining a secret, when a public votes twenty million 
pounds for the construction of these pyramids!) And 
she has a wiry dog who sat down and looked at me 
Searchingly when I first entered the house. ''Will she 
walk me as far as the chalk-pit?" he asked, for he 
measures friendship by this. And there is a garden, 
where you must throw a ball and yet not knock off 
the fruit. Within the garden, or the house, is my 
hostess. She never leaves her wheeled chair, and yet, 
like another dear shut-in whom I visit in London, 
she can tell me more of what is going on in the world 
than I could discover if I spent my life running round 
the earth. She lets me contend fiercely for my coun- 
try, and she flies the American flag when I come, but 
her walls are hung with the battle-axes of her an- 
cestors, and while she doesn't use them on me, I 
doubt if she in the least sympathizes with my 
radical views. I am her guest, and can do no 
wrong; and that is a bit of feudalism which I trust 
will never die. 

I go to a house down in Surrey, arriving early at 
Waterloo Station, for the tracks are so many and the 
village so small which marks my destination that 
Waterloo knows very little about it. I should like 
to transplant this house to the hills of Westchester, 
just to show what we can do in England. It is \)ng 
and low and thatched, vine-covered, and, thank God ! 
steam-heated. Luck comes to you when you are 
within those walls, for a house-leek grows upon a bit 
of the roof that is tiled, and you cannot but prosper, 
since the house-leek thrives there. The lawns and 
meadows slope down and down to the sea, so that 
you can glimpse the Isle of Wight on clear days. At 

least, the hostess claims that, but she is of Italian 

318 



4 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

blood — her honest English husband is obliged to 
deprecate the fancy. 

Then there is Sonning, with a start from Paddington 
Station, compartment doors banging agreeably as the 
Sunday-morning traveler goes down for a day on the 
river — the river, which, of course, means the Thames. 
One steps down, not up, into the house I visit there, 
yet there is no sensation of damp, and one can but 
admire these sixteenth-century habitations, with their 
fine new drains, electric lights, and tiled bath-rooms. 

It is this combination of Old-World beauty with 
New-World comforts which "gets" the American. 
At times I almost wish this combination wasn't so 
prevalent. There would be less to fight against, and 
I give an eager ear to servants' troubles, hoping they 
will be insuperable, as they were in my case, and 
make me want to go home. But they do not seem to 
find it as difficult to keep servants in the country as 
we do. Besides, we have all grown simpler in our 
tastes, and a British host does not object, as our men 
do at home, to helping himself and others on a Sun- 
day from the sideboard, with never a servant in sight. 

The only labor trouble that was agitating my hostess 
on my first visit to Sonning was with her gardener. 
I expected to see a bent old man, too blind to know 
a tulip bulb from a potato, and was touched by her 
liberalism when she said she always asked the gar- 
dener in to meals. However, the gardener elected to 
go to the inn for lunch, and, I hope, had a couple of 
half -pints, as a gardener should on a Sunday, although 
I discovered him to be a lady of very superior birth, 
if not superior knowledge of gardening. It was some- 
thing of a relief not to have her at table, as she had 
been given her notice to quit. What happy results 

319 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

to be found in the garden — and to me it was a riot of 
bloom — had been effected through the efforts of a 
small boy the lady-gardener had engaged as assistant. 

I don't know why the aristocrat refused to weed and 
clip and spray, as I suppose even an aristocratic 
gardener's job depends upon her efforts. More than 
that, she was one of the rebellious girls who are saying 
that they will not retm^n to the roof-trees of their 
fathers, no matter whether they have jobs or not. 
I should think any girl would prefer to garden by the 
river at Sonning to a life at "The Towers," or what- 
ever baronial hall she came from, even if she had to 
labor in it, and I shouldn't think it would be very 
difficult, anyway, to look after flowers that had been 
told for centuries how to behave. 

Indeed, everything is cultivated in this country — 
speech, la\\Tis, manners, gooseberries, plays, acquaint- 
ances in Tubes — everything. And the worst of it 
was, I was beginning to love it, yet not so much to 
love it, which isn't very dangerous, but to accept it 
all as a matter of beautiful coiuse. What I would 
notice when I got home would be the difference. For 
there I would find a raggedness in the fields and an 
unfinished air to the little towns, and the imperfections 
of our country roads; and I would miss this evenness 
of life. To live happily in America one must find his 
exhilaration in a different loveliness. He must feel 
the same glow that came into the face of a young 
Englishman who had had ten years in the United 
States. "We can see cities grow out here!" he sex- 
claimed to one of his nation who felt the loss of 
Sussex downs and Surrey hills and the polished, pad- 
locked Thames. 

It was on the twenty-eighth day of June, the day 

320 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

peace was signed at Versailles — on my way to the 
usual matinee — that I turned on the street to look 
after a passing boy because his accent was American. 
I no longer noticed an English accent, and I had 
ceased to notice whether a person was English or 
American if his accent was Enghsh. The American 
intonation, I realized to my horror, was becoming 
abnormal. It was on that day I sent a letter to my 
English management asking that I might return be- 
fore the autumn. I did not say I wanted to go home 
because I was growing English, for I wasn't — any 
Englishman could tell me that. But I didn't want to 
say ''frock" for "dress," or ''directly" for "right 
away," or think in English money. Yet I was be- 
ginning to do it. I was like the little American boy 
of six, who, after a few weeks in France, began, to 
his great perplexity, introducing French words into 
his baby-English sentences. He rebelled against it: 
"Why must I do this?" I heard him cry. 

So I wTote the letter, and I'm glad I sent it before 
night fell on that Peace Day, before the traffic was 
shut off in the streets and the people began gathering 
for their soft, happy merrymaking. Write me down 
an American, but the English laiow better than do 
we how to carry the transcendent moments of life. 
And I suppose that, too, is cultivated. 

When JNIafeking was relieved during the Boer War 
I was in London. I was in the audience at a play, 
and a member of the company came quickly to the 
foothghts, gasping, "Ladies and gentlemen — I have 
the honor to announce the relief of Mafeldng." Where- 
at we all rose as one man and asked God to Save the 
Queen. Some sort of a performance continued, but 
the roar growing in the Strand dulled the meaning 

321 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

of the lines, and when we went out we saw the kind 
of a scene that the king of stage-directors could 
rehearse with all the skilled actors of the world, and 
then get nothing of gaiety and abandonment in com- 
parison. They were the English, rejoicing after weeks 
of strange doubt of their invincibility. They were 
utterly given over to enjoying themselves, without 
the aid of alcohol or rattles, for there had been no 
time for such diversion. 

Ever since then, when one goes roistering in Lon- 
don, it is said, ''He is out mafficking," yet I, who 
knew the tin horn of the Middle West on election 
nights, did not find them very roisterous even then; 
and on this sweet June eve they simply came together 
and jigged in the streets, swung their partners, changed 
hats, did a little kissing and jigged again. I walked 
home after the play that night, and the whole length 
of Piccadilly was given over to little knots of dancers, 
strangers meeting for the first time, one man — gen- 
erally a soldier — playing on a mouth-organ. Back 
and forth went the two opposing rows, back and forth, 
with little springy steps. There was no shouting, no 
swearing, just back and forth quite silently, . while 
the soldier with the mouth-organ danced and played. 

It took me an hour to get home, for I lingered with 
the crowds watching the dancers and found it easy 
to talk with every one. A stranger with an accent 
I couldn't locate told me out of a clear sky that he 
was a Secret Service man, which freedom of expression 
is hardly one's idea of a man on secret service bent; 
but, fib or no, he informed me that he had conducted 
one of our great financiers all along the British front 
during the war, that the civilian gentleman was many 
times under fire, yet he never batted an eyelid. ''In 

322 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

a manner of speaking, he's the kind of a man a bullet 
couldn't touch," he said, admiringly. ''He's the kind 
of a man that nothink couldn't touch." 

And while I know ''nothink" of the invulnerability 
of this rich compatriot, I immediately grew sorry for 
him. For if he could not be touched he could probably 
touch nothing, neither the ceiling nor the floor, neither 
the heights nor depths of life. All those people dancing 
jig-steps in the streets had been touched by the bul- 
lets of the war, and now they were transcendently 
happy for a little while. Sorrow will come to them 
once more — rain in their lives, then again sun, and a 
rainbow. I, a very tired woman, was standing on the 
edge of the dancers, whereas in earlier days I would 
have been of the dancers. Surely time had touched 
me. Yet I decided that my age is about the last 
thing I'd give up, for within those years my feet have 
known the earth, my head the heavens. 



Chapter XIX 

'"^ ^ "▼HO'LL buy my lavender?" sang a ven- 

\ ^k I der in the street. His voice was full and 

yf yf resonant and the old, old words with 

the old, old tune discouraged further idle dabs at a 

jnodern typewriter. 

The upper chambermaid came to the window with 
me. She said that it reminded her of home, not that 
they sing it there; nobody would buy lavender in 
Mitchim — that's where it grows. She enjoyed seeing 
it in the city streets, she went on to say — it was 
country-like. When it comes right down to it she'd 
rather see those fragrant stalks in the streets than in 
the fields, but it was nice to know that the country 
was going on — somewhere — and that she could go 
back to it if she wanted to — which she didn't. This 
was slightly abstruse yet more edifying than the sub- 
ject she had been previously pursuing. That had 
been all about the club portress — a fine, strapping 
Irish girl, free from guile to look at, who, in reality, 
smoked cigarettes. ''Smokes 'em furious, ma'am." 

''Who'll buy my lavender?" asked the man, looking 
so directly at me that I was obliged to shout back, 
"I will," and sent the maid down with some pennies. 
My clarion response caused such of the street as were 
taking the air to look up at me, and the chauffeur, 
waiting at the house with the blue tablet, throttled 
down his engine so suddenly that he shut off his power, 

324 




;^1 



I 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

and then stared reproachfully, for he had no self- 
starter. 

He got out and began to crank the car and the butler 
and footman continued carrying out small trunks and 
dressing-cases, laundry-bags, and all the odd para- 
phernalia which traveling Englishmen burden them- 
selves with. They stored certain impedimenta within 
the Umousine, but such as had to go on top were left 
for the chauffeur, as the duties of English servants 
are sharply defined and they had nothing to do with 
roofs. The master and mistress then came out, and 
the lady, very unsuitably gotten up in a tulle scarf 
(and other garments of a like ephemeral character), 
said she'd buy some lavender, too. It is a custom for 
the best people to buy lavender, and she would not 
depart from it even though she was going straight 
onto mauveish moors. She handed the dried, acrid 
grasses to a maid fitly garbed in a print of purplish 
hue— indeed all the maids of that house wore those 
colors, contrasting very well with the painter's maids 
next door who wore scarlet linen. Then the servants 
bowed to the master and mistress and the great lady 
waved her hand to the cook, hoping no doubt that 
she would remain in her service, for she looked a good 
cook. ''Be sure to keep the flags flying," the master 
exhorted. And off they went to escape, as every one 
knew in the street, the crowds of Peace Week. 

The chambermaid returned with my purchase and 
had gathered — besides it — that the vender had just 
been demobbed. As the discharge occurred at lav- 
ender-time he took it as a h'omen and he returned 
immediately to his musical trade. He had told her, 
too, that he hadn't been afraid when fighting in the 
trenches exceptin' a-losing his voice from damp. The 

325 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

two had both watched the occupants of the tableted 
house roll away and both had agreed that the country 
was dull enough at any time, but to go down to it 
this week, and miss the Victory Procession! — she 
snorted and whisked the bed-linen about. 

I was then obliged to tell her that I was not going 
to see the procession either, that I was going to make 
every effort to avoid the crowds in attendance upon 
it, because — very piously — I had a matinee and a 
night performance and must keep in condition for 
my work. All of us in life must tlTink first of our 
sacred duty, I continued, and I might have gone on 
with more worthy aphorisms was I not finding, for 
the first time in my existence, a certain hollowness 
in these utterances. My work — my work was taking 
on a minor importance as compared with mere fes- 
tivities, and this desire to keep away from crowds, 
when I put my smugness into words, sounded pica- 
yunish — just picayunish. 

I was considerably confused over this and the maid 
did not encourage my attitude by any eulogistic 
utterances anent my stern denials. If she had been 
of my walk in life I beheve she would have said, 
"Stuff!" She certainly looked ''Stuff!" and she con- 
tinued to flap sheets distressingly about like signals 
for help. She wished to be protected from this woman 
who refused to abandon herself to the madcap mood 
of the world. 

I went out for a walk in Green Park, my writing 

uncompleted. Even in its farthest recesses the air 

was full of the sound of hammers, yet no one seemed 

to be disturbed by it but the sheep and myseK — 

mj^self and sheep pursuing our accustomed ways! 

Over in the Mall the decorators, in a fury of energy, 

326 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

were forgetting they were JBritish workmen with stern 
behefs as to a restricted output. Thousands of wood 
ammunition-cases were being utilized as the founda- 
tion for tiers of seats along the Mall, which were to 
be reserved for the wounded and for the mothers of 
sons killed in action. The royal pavilion was already 
shining white and gold at the foot of the Victoria 
Memorial. High above the living royalties, Victoria, 
in stone, would see that passing show — she who had 
been assured by her generals that no war with the 
British Empire could endure longer than a month, 
and had watched in grief the protracted struggle 
with the Boers. 

I walked up to a great hotel in Knightsbridge where 
the procession would first unfurl its banners. Every 
available bit of space in hotel window and balcony 
was for rent — the sum amassed to go to the blind of 
St. Dunstan's Hospital. It gave me a sudden pain 
down the nose and, assuming a languid interest, I 
asked the price of a very good seat. But there were 
no very good seats or very bad seats — they had all 
been sold. Earlier in the week I might have pro- 
cured one for five guineas. I turned away trying to 
feel twenty-five dollars richer, but I did not feel so 
very rich although I had a steady job — a steady, yes, 
an inflexible job, with, a weekly recurrent envelope. 

There was a luncheon-party on that day and the 
hostess pardoned me affably for my tardiness when 
I explained that I had been standing at a hotel door 
watching the American officers arrive. ''I was not 
able to get out of the crowd," I stiffly explained. 
It was not the truth ; I could have gotten out, but some 
good reason must be offered, ordinarily, for spoiling 
the fish course. Yet no one seemed to care about the 

22 327 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

food at this luncheon — all interests were centeiecl 
upon what they should put up for the lunch on 
Saturday; who would buy the pickles, who the sand- 
wiches, who the cakes. This went on at every gather- 
ing throughout the week. Fashionable as well as 
lowly London was thrashing itself into a fever of 
excitement over the advisability of stuffed eggs in the 
baskets. 

I protested over this. "You're like a picnic-party 
in La Porte, Indiana! It's all so young!" 

''It's the day to be young," one of them answered, 
blithely. ''Now I contend that sardines — " 

Yet, always, always through these discussions of 
edibles ran a somber note — ^a shadow which occasion- 
ally eclipsed the sunshine of their gay talk: "If it 
should rain!" some one would whisper. Now as a 
rule the Briton is seldom distressed over what is only 
a possibility, and rain does not enter into British 
lives until it is wetting their bonnets. There seems 
to be, to them, always an element of surprise in the 
discovery that the clouds are emptying themselves 
upon the patient lawn fete. "Why, it's raining!" they 
exclaim, and crowd into the marquee. The lawn 
fete is then in American eyes a failure. They are 
sorry for the hostess the while reflecting that she 
had to learn her lesson. Yet the following year she 
gives another garden-party — whicli is spent, per usual, 
anywhere but in the garden. 

Since the war the Londoners pay even less atten- 
tion to watery demonstrations against their comfort. 
With all England, men and women, in uniform, um- 
brellas went out of fashion and are still the exception 
in the street. Or, in their proud optimism, they may 

consider themselves impervious to a mean chemical 

328 





'if it should rain!" 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

combination of oxygen and hydrogen. They may be 
like a kinswoman of mine wlio, having recently em- 
braced a rehgion of faith, was besouglit by me to seek 
shelter from a shower. ''I don't get wet," said the 
aggravating religieuse. 

Of the more import, then, were the prayerful silences 
which followed the occasional whisper: ''If it should 
rain!" All London was suffering, even as they 
brought forth their bunting, from an apprehension as 
vague as the outline of the Zeppelins which once 
brooded above them, yet as devastating to their 
happiness. For all London was suffering from the 
menace of their more ancient foe — the weather. 

Although I was by now noisily claiming to be 
''fed up" with processions, this terrible thought of 
a wet day began beating through my brain. In my 
eagerness for a clear day, just for the sake of les autres, 
I got into a panic of distrust over my achieving in 
life those things for which I have most fondly hoped; 
and I wondered if I had not better pray that it ivould 
rain so that it contrarily wouldn't. Yes, and do it 
aloud, if that would help things any, even though my 
mates in the theater would translate my wish as one 
emanating from a low dog who — which — would be 
going through its tricks at a matinee, bone-drj'', except 
when standing in those spots where the roof leaked. 

I must not call it an inhospitable roof, however, 
even though porous, for on the night I was cogitating 
on the best way for me, personally, to effect fine 
weather on Saturday I came into the theater to find 
the littlest girl reading a notice on the call-board. 
It was a very remarkable notice — nothing like it had 
ever been hung there before — not in two hundred 
years — and nothing like it will ever hang there again, 

329 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

probably. It was signed by the lessee of the old 
house inviting the members of the comppny and the 
stage crew who lived remotely from the theater to 
bring their blankets and spend Victory night under 
its broad, sheltering wings. Traffic in the heart of 
the city would be shut off at nine in the morning, and 
the Tubes, while running all night under patriotic, 
voluntary service, would be the only means of moving 
some eight million citizens and countless visitors from 
one distance to another. 

I do not know why I was so thrilled by this. It 
may not thrill the reader, but the enormity of the 
hour bega.n to take hold of me. I felt conscious of 
the restricted plan for the day as laid down by one 
meanly hampered, it seemed now, by a hysterical 
sense of duty. I felt like some small infant tied in 
a chair and hearing the far-off band of the circus. It 
was then, as I stood by the side of the littlest girl, 
that I ventured a fear it might rain — although not 
yet craftily expressing the actual desire that it should 
rain. I would withhold this master-stroke until later, 
when the weather probabilities became gloomy actu- 
alities. But I got no farther with the littlest girl 
than the first negative breath, for she hushed me up 
as though I had committed treason, and by the time 
she was through pumping new-thought principles into 
me I felt that the success of the entire parade rested 
upon my putting the ''good thought" on the sun — 
and 'treating" the rain with firm suggestions to stay 
away. 

"Make a cheerful asseveration," she bade me. "It 
doesn't matter very much what you say, so that you 
are concentrating on the good, the true, and the 
beautiful." 

330 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

Mindful of her advice, I kept repeating inwardly, 
as I spoke the lines of the play that night, a phrase 
that had a familiar, hopeful beat which I did not 
actually define until the final curtain, when the com- 
pany gathered about me to ask why I said it. 

''Why I said what?" I demanded, in turn. 

''Said what you did instead of the tag?" The tag 
is the last line of the play, and in this instance is, 
"My country, 'tis of thee," repeated in unison. 

"Well, what did I say?" I snapped. 

"You said, 'Curfew shall not ring to-night,'" they 
jeered. 

And I suppose I did repeat it, which I still think 
better than an oft-chanted, "The shun shall shine on 
Shaturday!" 

When we left the theater that evening we were 
swept up in a happy procession of singing soldiers 
and their girls marching to Foch's hotel to bring him 
out on the balcony with their cheers. It was delightful 
folly, for all of us knew that Foch was at the Alhambra. 
Everybody knew how every general was spending his 
evening. We in the street spoke only of men of rank 
through this week. Beatty was dining quietly with 
friends; Pershing was at a dance where a beautiful 
lady knelt and removed his spurs; the Italians were 
being banqueted; all of this talk while murmurs of 
regret were heard among the plain people that Sims 
was not present — probably the most popular American 
London has found pleasure in honoring. 

The crowd waited until Foch returned, and sang 
to him, but I went on up the Haymarket where at 
the head of the street the traffic had been stopped 
for a moment while the United States troops marched 
out of a music-hall. That I could not see them, hop 

331 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

up in the air as I might, gave me a gnawing sensation 
akin to hunger, and which, Uke hunger, was not to 
be assuaged by any pictured representation of food. 
I was not going to be content, as I had tried to com- 
fort myself, with a very good view of those boys in the 
fihns the following Sunday evening. It must be flesh 
and blood with me. ''Fee — fi — fo — fum" mingled 
through my dreams with "Curfew shall not ring 
to-night!" 

It was a feeble-minded boy in David Copperfield 
who sold the spoons and spent his ill-gotten gains 
riding on the top of a bus from Putney to the Bank. 
It may have been a feeble-minded woman who spent 
what part of the next day she could riding up and 
down on No. 9 bus, peering over the railings of Ken- 
sington Gardens, to see our troops who were quartered 
there. The gates of the gardens were closed and 
locked to all but soldiers. They were within in the 
company of Peter Pan, and possibly no one had a key 
but Barrie, who must have been too staggered at the 
strange invasion to use it. Barrie's little friends 
could not travel the Broad Walk, nor sail boats on 
the Round Pond, and outside the palings rebellious 
perambulators held stormy meetings and drafted 
letters of protest to the Times. Little girls looked 
wistfully through the iron interstices, but they could 
see no more of the men in uniform than could the 
feather-brained woman lurching along on No. 9. 

I do not know what determination entered into 
their baby souls to meet those boys later on, even 
if they had to marry them, but a mighty resolve came 
to me to see my troops on the march, though the 
effort would, in a measure, disturb the set order of a 
matinee day. For by this time I undoubtedly wanted 

332 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

to view the procession, not as the infant tied in her 
chair would want to view a circus parade — for one's 
temporary enjoyment — but to be ever so small a 
part of the most momentous day in history. Surely 
every spectator added to the throngs who would for- 
gather would pay, by his presence, molecular tribute 
to the men who were passing in review — and to those 
who would not pass along the ways of hfe again. 

It was at this period of growth that I fell a victim 
to the periscope scheme. I heard of it first on top 
of the bus and followed two decayed gentlewomen 
down to the shop where periscopes were to be pur- 
chased. The gentlewomen objected to crowds, they 
thought them indelicate, but they agreed that a 
periscope could be no more bothersome than a sun- 
shade and would probably attract no more attention 
—which was quite true unless I could mentally treat 
the sun. Over in Westminster the army were selling 
off hundreds of this new form of military equipment, 
but we contented ourselves with modest affairs that, 
by careful manipulation, would bring mirrored gen- 
erals to our close observance even though we stood 
on the far edge of the vulgar herd. With one of these 
implements in hand I planned that on Saturday I 
would walk toward the Mall, going matinee-ward, 
and, as in a dark glass darkly, cheer our troops upon 
their way. The thought was not exhilarating, how- 
ever. I can imagine nothing more pathetic than 
cheering into a small mirror hoisted high in the air, 
and I did not notice until I unwrapped my periscope 
at home that the pictured directions showed a gentle- 
man gaining happy, peering results by lying down in 
a rough field. My imagination did not embrace with 

any joy the prospect of becoming one of a string of 

333 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

prostrate old ladies stretched along the line cf march, 
but it was the next best thing to viewing the heroes 
from a seat which I felt I could not afford, and if 
uncomfortable striving counts for anything I would 
surely be paying a tribute to the greatness of the hour. 

While I was now concentrating whole-heartedly on 
good weather and was beginning to feel that I was 
going to bring it about (perhaps), I had not the 
supreme faith of the littlest girl, who was by this time 
asserting that ''the good, the true, and the beautiful" 
were going to arrange for her to see the show and not 
spend five guineas for a seat either. She said I could 
see it, too, if I would just believe. 

''But how can I believe when I don't?" I wailed. 
And to this she replied that faith would come with 
study, which did me very little good as, cram as I 
might, I could never manage it until several weeks 
after the parade was over. 

That was the night — Thursday night — that I 

climbed up little ladders to the theater roof, at the 

risk of making a frightful stage wait, to see if it would 

be possible to catch a ghmpse of marching troops 

from that high vantage point. I scrambled down 

again and played the next scene with dirty hands, 

my purpose defeated, for I could not have caught so 

much as the glint of a tin hat passing through the 

Admiralty Arch. But the few minutes alone up there, 

the anxious call-boy at the foot of the ladder, had 

given me something else besides dirty hands. As I 

looked down from the serene height upon the London 

I had grown to love, it seemed to me that it was 

holding its breath in suspense; that from now on 

until the first crash of chords Saturday morning the 

movement of the city would be but perfunctory — 

331 



1 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

that the masses of the people witliin the shops and 
houses were spiritually at pause. This comes to me 
every Saturday before the break of Easter Day — 
this waiting. The sensation surely must preface the 
birth of a child and that instant before the zero hour 
of an attack. 

So, as well as unclean digits, I brought to the audi- 
ence in the next scene a woman with a high resolve — 
who was playing her role far too emotionally as the 
result of it; although the darlings out front would 
have certainly forgiven me had I advanced to the 
footlights and said, ''Ladies and gentlemen — I am 
going to see that procession!" 

If the faith of the littlest girl amounts to anything 
it must have been that I had not really resolved to 
see the procession until my visit to the roof and, 
having firmly made up my mind, the way was made 
clear for me to see it. American mail came in before 
the performance was over, and when I opened my 
letters at the end of the play out of one of them fell 
a check. It represented the price of a picture of one 
who would no longer make them, who was no longer 
here, yet whose care of me went on now and then in 
this quiet demonstration of the deathlessness of those 
who have created. 

I was glad that I was alone with Mrs. Wren when 
the envelope was opened, for, all through the season, 
this dear woman was, somehow or other, part of 
every harmonious moment. She had ever lent her 
goodness and her interest to making the hour happier. 
There were always two of us gleeful, if I was full of 
glee. As I looked at the check, with the dollars 
transcribed into pounds, she was busying herself hid- 
ing bottles. Mrs. Wren and I had been smuggling in 

335 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

liquid refreshment for several days, although of tliis 
she had not entirely approved. She had said, out 
flat, I had better spend the money for a seat and not 
mess it about in a general merrymaking, and tliie was 
generous in her as she and the other dressers and ail 
the stage crew were to come in on the bottles Victoiy 
Night. But it had been my theory, earlier in the week, 
that several molecules paying tribute to the day 
would be a better way of celebrating than the spend- 
ing of a like sum on a small camp-stool which would 
be enjoyed by but one molecule. 

When I called Mrs. Wren to look at the check and 
told her that it represented an etching made many 
years ago, she did not exclaim over it as a little bit 
of all right, or suggest that I might now get that gown 
at the sale in Bond Street, but she touched the bit 
of paper awesomely as she whispered, ''It's like a voice, 
isn't it, madam?" 

''What does it say?" I asked. 

"It says you're to see the procession," said this 
countrywoman. "It crossed the water to say that." 

I suppose the littlest girl would have thought so, 
too, but I never told her. It was Mrs. Wren's beau- 
tiful secret and mine. And I went out into the early 
morning the next day to search for a place, feeling 
not quite alone — that some one was with me who 
had so longed for this day that he was not, even now, 
quite unconscious of the earthly beauty of its approach. 

The following morning I went out even earlier, 
the exaltation of the moment not soaring, dragged 
down a bit by the material struggling for stuffed eggs 
in my lunch-box. The words that John Drinkwater 
has given to our martyred chief in his play of "Abra- 
Jiam Lincoln" recurred to me as I made my way 

33G 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

practically toward the Tube. ''For four years life 
has been but the hope of this moment. It is strange 
how simple it is when it comes." So luncheon, flags, 
periscope, police pass, and myself went into the Tube 
out of the pale but durable sunshine for which I had 
arranged. As my Irish waitress had said when she 
brought in my early coffee, ''The day is better than 
it looks." 

The trains were not greatly crowded, and until I 
reached the surface at Trafalgar Square I thought I 
was the only one in London who had sufficient brains 
to start early. I recall a family of six who, before they 
entered the lift which carried us to the street, agreed 
that they would move toward the lions in the square 
(but not so as to give to the world an inkling of their 
plan) and climb upon the backs of one of the beasts. 
They were not greedy — they would not sit upon all 
the great bronze animals. 

I should like to know what became of that family. 
I did not know what became of me for the first few 
minutes after I was swept into the maelstrom. I 
remember getting my hands up high enough to show 
a constable my pass proving that I had a seat on a 
balcony about sixty feet away in Whitehall, and a 
certain cynical look in his eyes as he gave me full 
permission to go ahead. Yet half an hour afterward 
I was still marking time a few feet farther back than 
my original starting-place. Trafalgar Square was one 
solid mass of people, with no lions whatever in sight, 
all having been covered up by the microbe, man, since 
before sunrise. 

After a while I began talking. I began telling a 

disinterested public that I had a balcony seat in 

Whitehall. "Righto, old dear," one crushed pedestrian 

337 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

sang out finally. ''Go and sit on it!" While this 
created some amusement, it also drew attention to 
me, and a kindly coster advised me if an ambulance 
passed through to Northumberland Avenue to get 
well down and be'ind it and keep moving. It sounded 
like a joke — something like the frolicsome advice to 
''go jump in the river." I had not paid a large price 
for a seat in Whitehall to crawl under an ambulance 
going down Northumberland Avenue. I was inclined 
to tell him so, angrily, but my ill humor would have 
been out of place among these amazing people, not 
one ten-thousandth of whom would get more than a 
roll of drums as their part of the day's festivities, and 
yet who were swaying and smiling with the rest 
through all this rib-cracking. 

It was by swaying and smiling that I did insinuate 
myself behind, and almost under, an ambulance, and, 
like one on a penance, made my way insidiously 
against the crowd down the avenue. It is extraor- 
dinary when one gets into a side-street after a crush. 
One feels that the mob must surely have been dissi- 
pated, but while it was still going on, and very much 
so, when I turned into lower Whitehall I could man- 
age, before I gained my seat, to buy a wreath and 
lay it among the thousands of others heaped about the 
Cenotaph. 

It took the greatest day in history for me to learn 
that a cenotaph is a moument erected, not over the 
dead in the ground beneath, but in memory of those 
elsewhere buried. But after seeing this one I shall 
never define the word as anything but a simple piling 
up of hewed stone, lowly expressing a lowly grief. 
I mean lowly in the sense of humble, unalloyed by 
pomp and circumstance, a common unity of tears for 

33S 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

those who died for a common cause. When the 
temporary monument becomes enduring granite this 
will probably be a spot, as it is to-day, where the 
English will unleash their emotions, where they will 
cry unashamedly. Some will lay down their scrubby 
bouquet of ill-assorted flowers, with "Joey," or "Bill," 
or ''My boy" scrawled upon the card; others will place 
there a wreath of orchids, but the inscriptions will 
read the same, and all the offerings will blend together 
in the blessed democracy of flowers. 

The British Empire has as yet no day for its dead, 
but from the scenes about the Cenotaph it was not 
hard to realize how they would give their hearts to 
a Memorial Day like ours. When some five hundred 
Americans took the train to Brookfield Cemetery on 
the 30 th of May to decorate the graves of our soldiers 
buried there, a number of Englishmen came with us 
and entered into our service — with their own men 
in their hearts, I hope. An English gentlewoman, 
who had come down alone, stood by me when we 
reached God's acre for the Americans, and after 
looking over the names on the first headstones that 
met her eye, said she would be praying for all the 
world. For of the first ten graves of this row, two 
were Saxon, two Italian, one Irish, one Greek, one 
Pole, one Russian, one of a nationality unknown to 
us, and one well known, a German name. It may 
have been the recognition of this dead boy of Teuton 
origin which caused her to add that she hoped when 
the Empire did set aside a memorial day that it 
would be the 30th of May also, and that in time all 
nations might lay wreaths at one universal hour upon 
the graves of those who had died for their country. 
She felt that it would create a great unity of spirit. 

339 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

While she may be entirely wrong I thought it was 
most generous of her, and wished we all had a kindred 
League of Nations in our breasts. She hoped for 
something else — this fine lady whom I shall never see 
again probably. She hoped that some American who 
wrote was among the number that day, that the 
mothers whose boys lay there might know how beau- 
tiful was the place — how the birds sang— and how 
every year my own club of American women will 
lay a garland upon each grave. So, while not many 
mothers will read my story, perhaps, I have at least 
fulfilled her wish. 

I reached the seat in my balcony five minutes 
before the mass broke past the police horses, leaning 
their flanks full weight against people, to form a dead- 
lock of terrible pressure with the mass moving up 
Whitehall toward the Square. There were others 
upon the balcony, sharing the common danger of the 
ancient structure falling down upon the strugghng 
throng below and putting them out of their agony 
with despatch. Still others of us were crowded into 
the window, three seats to a sill, and still more on 
a tier of seats back in the room commanding a limited 
view of the sidewalk on the opposite side of the sti^eet. 
They were all uncomfortable enough to be chatty and 
gay, but they were not Londoners, and they showed 
a pained disinclination to bounce into a conversation 
with me. However, I could but exclaim over the 
terrible pack beneath us. In the fear of death, even 
though it were not our death, I thought we might 
speak without exchanging cards. 

While not Londoners they knew then- London 
crowds and shook their heads over my expectation of 
mangled bodies. "Panic? No fear! They'll just 

340 



AN AJVIERICAN'S LONDON 

surge," they said, cheerfully, and so the people did — 
surged like the tide — with no cry of distress, no hys- 
teria, no mad elbowing or curses. Such a patient 
people eager to be happy! 

I have an English seamstress over here whose words 
I hang upon, for they are pearls of wisdom. She 
tells me that the great fault with her compatriots 
is that they dislike work. They have never been 
taught to feel that labor is beautiful — it once was 
exacted from them practically under the lash, and 
from habit thej^ still labor grudgingly. For that rea- 
son, said my seamstress, when they take their holiday, 
no matter how uncomfortable an outing it may 
develop into, they will not '^grouse." At least, they 
are not at their hated jobs — they went out to enjoy 
themselves and, by the great horned sjDoon, they 
ivill enjoy themselves. I should prefer the depths 
of a coal-mine and the pay that goes with it to a full 
day's burial on a city sidewalk without remuneration, 
but the English don't, and that's all there is about it. 

It made us sad — that is, it made me sad and my 
companions from the provinces slightly disturbed 
(although they may have felt worse than I did, but 
kept it bottled up) to see people dropping from ex- 
haustion. Almost a hundred directly beneath us 
received the splendid, patient attendance of those 
men in black uniforms known as the Order of St. 
John of Jerusalem — those ancient Hospitallers of the 
Temple, and now the Red Cross of the city. As far 
as the eye could reach the physically unfit lay along 
in the gutters on either side the street or were heaped 
upon the islands in the middle of Whitehall. The pack 
was too great to take them to the ambulances in the 
side-streets, so there they stayed, some feebly strug- 

341 



AN AMERICxVN'S LONDON 

gling up, some wanly lying with faces turned toward 
the pageant as it came along. 

While I am no skeptic, it may have occurred to a 
few clever ones that fainting had its good points. 
One was then pulled out from the depths and could 
lie, like a Roman at the Revels, and watch the whole 
show. One fat girl went off into a fresh swoon eveiy 
time an effort was made to heave her off the canvas 
litter, always reviving in time to wig-wag to the gen- 
erals passing at the head of their columns. 

Many of these fainting ones were little boys and 
girls and I was the more sad, for this collapse spoke 
mutely of the underfeeding of the last four years. 
It was bitter that the sacrifices of those years should 
'Hhrow-back" in this fashion on the day that stood 
as a reward for their long denials. But so it was, 
and the marching troops, on viewing these little spent 
bodies along the hue of march, must have found in 
them a faint replica of grimmer fields of struggle. 

It was in employing my periscope in an effort to 
count the prostrate ones far up by the square that I 
discovered the littlest girl, not lying in the gutter, 
for my periscope refused to show me anything I 
sought, but sitting on the top of a motor-car that had 
broken down in a very convenient place early in the 
day when traffic had not yet ceased, probably through 
the connivance of the owner. I recognized her purple 
cap and cape, and I felt, although the mirror did 
not reproduce it, her tremendous satisfaction with a 
religion that had secured her this free seat. The 
tail-end of the processio^n would have disappeared 
through the Admiralty Arch well before the matinee, 
and she would be smugly putting on her grease-paint 
as I would still be strugghng toward the theater. 

342 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

This was the first time I had thought of grease- 
paint as part of the day's curriculum, and the idea 
was most repugnant. It was no day for mummery. 
I would rather be one of those lying in the gutter, 
crying, ''We who are about to die, salute thee!" 
Still, I did not absolutely rebel; there was no flag of 
anarchy waving about me as yet, only my two small 
American ones, the sticks of which had prodded the 
stuffing out of the eggs in my struggles in the street. 
I am not a flag-waver by instinct, but I had carried 
the colors so that they would give me courage to 
''holler." It is so much easier to cheer when some- 
thing is in your hands — -and I was going to cheer even 
if I had no voice for the matinee. 

Yet I was in a highly nervous state for fear that the 
public was not going to — that they would not, I 
should say — cheer my general and my troops. As 
the countries marched alphabetically, our nation 
would come first, and perhaps the people would not 
be warmed up to huzzas. I peeped sideways at 
my provincial companions. I longed to make a bar- 
gain with them, to say, "I'll cheer your general if 
you'll cheer mine." But I hadn't the courage — they 
would have thought me "quaint." Besides, if they 
were readers of character they would know that a 
woman emotional enough to keep dabbing her eyes 
because the decorations were so beautiful would cheer 
everybody, anyway. 

I was still agonizing over the possibility of our 
troops not making a hit when a bee buzzed in the ear 
that was trained in the direction of the Houses of 
Parliament. I flapped at it, but as I flapped the buzz 
grew stronger. There was a strange fittle murmur 
in the street, too, low and yet above the songs and 

23 343 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

the shoutings. It rippled along to the square and 
there grew into a field of sound. There was such a 
concerted movement of the masses, such a turning 
of the cheek down Whitehall, that the color of the 
crowds took on a difTercnt tone ; there was more white 
in it. Before we had seen only the tops of their hats. 
And now little boys and girls buried in the crowds for 
hours were being disinterred and lifted up on fathers' 
shoulders, and the swooners began to take notice. 
The buzz grew louder, but I would not flap it away, 
for I knew now that it was not a buzz — it was a 
voice. The one great voice of the world. Oh, thrill- 
ing vox populil It was the people — the real rulers of 
destinies— not those tight souls sitting on the balcony; 
they will never be rulers — it was the ''plain people" 
cheering the Americans. 

Big Ben must have been chiming twelve, but for 
once no one heard it, as up Whitehall, out of the 
magnificent shadow of the clock-tower came a charger. 
It was not a well-behaved one, a charger going side- 
ways, but with a big man riding it who had no concern 
with its curvetings. A big man with a spray of 
roses on his saddle pommel nodding to the hurrah- 
ing people, not saluting — less formal — smiling easily, 
confident, yet modest, as though to say, "We're only 
the beginning — wait." Or he may have been think- 
ing, for Pershing has humor, ''What does the Bible 
say? — the last shall be first?" And then our men 
came along and I don't know whether I was yelhng 
all the time, or the crowd was, or both of us together. 
I alone upon our balcony cheered the Americans, that 
I know, but it made no difference, there was plenty 
of noise — enough even for an American — from the 
plain people below. Yet when our troops halted for 

344 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

their rest my companions threw them cigarettes and 
fruit, and every one laughed the way those huge fel- 
lows, all of whom had played baseball from the day 
they were out of skirts, simply stuck out their arms 
and caught everything without moving their bodies. 

It was while I was waving my flags and hurrahing 
that I said, inside of me — my vocal cords being 
otherwise employed: "Why, this is the happiest 
moment of my life — of my whole life! And yet I'm 
not in the procession. I'm just watching it — just a 
bystander," and then: ''Of course, that's it. Some- 
body must be a bystander or there wouldn't be any 
procession passing by. So, after all, you're part of it 
— part of the great scheme." At this I had to dab 
my eyes again before I could go on gratefully com- 
muning: "And how lovely that this should come to 
me now — this understanding! Not pop at me when 
I was younger, when standing on the sidewalk would 
have meant a failure. How lovely that this should 
come to me now, when I haven't so many other 
pleasant things to think about!" 

This is all written too easily. It should not be 
clamped down into words at all. For I felt that my 
heart was being carried on butterfly wings, high, 
high up. My heart was different things. It was a 
balloon, too — a rosy one — so big that I feared that 
by one extra breath of laughing-gas it would float 
away altogether and drag me out of my expensive 
camp-stool. I groped about for an anchor, for some 
material thought to keep me down to earth. I sup- 
pose it was in searching for the material thought 
that I thought again of my miserable duty for the 
afternoon. I could now understand perfectly why 
the British hated work. 

345 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

I looked at Big Ben. It was getting on. Although 
I would not have to cross the line of march, it would 
take an hour of swaying and smiling and possibly 
fainting to make my way to the side-street forty 
feet away, and from there twist back to my work. 
A sneer spoiled one of my best cheers at the word 
''work." It made me sick. The procession was not 
half over and I was planning how I could get out 
and off to my contemptible occupation. (It was 
"contemptible occupation" by this time.) I couldn't 
even celebrate my great discovery of the joy accruing 
from being at once on life's sidewalk and part of life's 
pageant without having to watch the clock. 

Yet I must celebrate it in some unusual fashion — 
this was the day of days. I looked up toward the 
littlest girl for help. I applied the periscope. She 
was gone. She, a child of the theater, was instinctively 
following in the beaten path. But this was no day 
for beaten paths, and if that was so — I caught my 
breath between the automatic cheers I was uttering. 
If this hour really was greater than my work, now was 
the time to prove it. I stopped cheering. I would 
celebrate it as only an actress could who has not 
missed a performance in her twenty-five years' ex- 
perience. I spoke down to the crowds. "I will not 
go to the matinee!" I said. 

Oh, it is nothing to you, you readers, unless you 
have gatherfed from these pages the scandalousness of 
such a proceeding, the daring of it! From now on, 
as I walk down Broadway, they will say, "There goes 
the woman who wouldn't go to the matinee." "111?" 
"No! Went to the parade! " I was fearless, and talked 
to myself, fiercely. "Let 'em shut up — I don't care. 
Do 'em good, A matinee on Victory Pay!" 

346 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

I had now blown my nose and cheered up — and 
on — and had my second wind for Foch and Haig. 
Foch, unlike our idea of a Frenchman, was not 
demonstrative, but the people were. His horse and 
baton seemed to be in his way, and he may have 
been reserving himself for his superb gesture before 
the king, when he raised his baton high above his 
head, bringing it down again with a sweep of triumph. 
Yet this surely was too magnificent to have been 
anything but impromptu. Haig sat his horse well 
and saluted correctly, as a Briton should, and with 
his passing I knew what huzzas really were. Beatty 
came on foot. It seems strange that these men of 
the navy, who stand in the high places on their ships, 
have no method of conveyance on dry land which fitly 
expresses the dignity of their calling. It is as though 
their real place was not the brown earth, but the 
broad waters. 

We had voices for them all. I have never known 
a crowd before not show signs of flagging, but at 
every strange uniform there was a fresh outburst 
along the eight-mile line of march. Yes, and when the 
provincial party on the balcony vented themselves 
in a fury of, "Good old Sussex," or ''Good old Sur- 
rey," as a contingent from the regiment of the shires 
passed by, they could not keep their plaudits at all 
select. I joined in, too, for I was part of that pro- 
cession, lock, stock, and barrel. I looked no more at 
Big Ben, save once when I gave my companions a 
last chance to talk to me. '^It's two-fifteen," I said, 
defiantly, to them. ''The orchestra's gone in!" But 
they thought me no madder than heretofore, one of 
them very amiably murmuring, "Quite!" 

Yet, as I made my way weakly home in the late 

347 



AN AMERICAN'S LONDON 

afternoon, I knew that I should be ready to return 
to my fold at night. It has its circumscribed advan- 
tages. That night I should be marching to and fro 
upon the stage and others would be sitting in expensive 
seats, if not actually cheering, at least not hissing me. 
A.nd while that world is a mimic one in which I am 
ever so mild a marching warrior, it is a lucky gray- 
haired woman who can stand on the sidewalk and 
march in the procession. Lucky is she, too, who at 
the ebb of life can be a part of lovers' lives and of 
adventures and of moons that are not real, since the 
realities are not for her, for drama stirs safely the 
emotions, like reflections in a mirror which are dissi- 
pated when the glass is shifted. 

Yes, I must confess, even in the theater it is pleasant 
to have lovers about— if only to reflect how much 
better you could do the scene yourself if you were 
younger. But even when you are younger you could 
not play the scene as you could have played it in a 
real garden under a real moon, no matter how bad 
an actor the real lover would be. ''Now, our leading 
man, for instance — " In this way my mind was 
working as I went about full of contentment, and years, 
and stuffed eggs, and flags. I would have liked to 
have given the leading man a pointer or two for the 
sake of whatever girl he would select to be his very 
best. A good man, a very good one, I decided, but 
a little angular in his love-making. A little too cor- 
rect — needed limbering up. 

At this point of my musing I was moving, with peri- 
scope, toward Hyde Park that I might hear the massed 
bands and the ten thousand voices. But, following 
the order of the day, there were other masses than 

bands, and I had no more made the refuge in Park 

348 



AN AMERICAN'S, LONDON 

Lane by the fountain than word went round that the 
royalties were coming. The refuge was not crowded, 
but heads were taller than mine and again I set my 
periscope, this time to catch a king. And again the 
wilful periscope showed me strange sights — unfolded 
them, as I swept the crowded pavement opposite in 
my effort to get a focus — as a series of taunting re- 
plies to one who had come to England to escape the 
slings and arrows of an outrageous Cupid. 'Arry 
walked with 'Arriet — arms entwined; soldiers and 
their girls — arms entwined; provincials and their nice 
young ladies — arms entwined; all England — arms en- 
twined. All England and some foreigners, and among 
them — the periscope does not lie— among them — 
arms entwined — ^Beechey and the leading man. The 
leading man, all limbered up, with Victory in his eye. 
The royalties passed, but I did not see them. My 
knees had given way and I was sitting on the stone 
edge of the horse-trough — on and in it. The royalties 
passed, and those on the refuge, and I arose from the 
horse-trough — but, finding my coattails dripping, I 
turned to wring them in the granite bowl. Go see it 
some day, will 3^ou? — in Park Lane by the fountain. 
Go read upon it the inscription which met the eye of 
one who'd gone to London to be comforted with 
apples. Read it, and be glad — as I was — that we 
couldn't ever, ever get away from what I once had 
fled. For the inscription runs, the very horse-trough 
cries : 



NEW DAYS, NEW WAYS PASS BY. LOVE STAYS " 



THE END 



'i^ 



.-- .,5 



